Sabo Maeda — Restaurant in Kyoto

Very quiet and peaceful garden tea house. Overlooking At a beautiful Japanese garden with a stream. Enjoy watching the nature living around you while sipping on a traditional speciality.

I chose the Matcha and a wagashi (set for 1200 yen). You will be offered the option following options: -Hot or cold. -Do it yourself or let the tea house handle it for you. Choose DIY and had a step by step instructions written.

It was a nice activity in a beautiful environment.

If you are alone you will be offered the outside bench which overlook at the nature.

The inside of the tea house doesn't have that great view, even if I tought that it lacked a bit of comfort.

I overall enjoyed my...

Very much needed a break whilst walking around Nijo castle and was relieved to find this place. The cafe is so Zen in the middle of gardens. You can either sit on a bench looking over the gardens or inside on traditional low tables. There was no air con but each table had a fan. To combat the summer heat we ordered Mango Kakigori to share and a drink each between two. The kakogori was fantastic, the ice was shaved so thin it melted in your mouth and the mango tasted strong but not synthetic. You pay as soon as you order, so you can leave whenever you've finished. There was quite a line by the time we finished at 12 midday, whereas we could...

Tourist trap. It was a hot day so we were desperate to sit indoors for a bit. They have a rule of “one person one order” which is fair enough but did not appreciate that they did not tell us this at the entrance, only after we sat down. This is a common tactic for places that serve mediocre food to persuade guests to stay since they’ve already made themselves comfortable. Shaved ice was overpriced and had only excessively sweet syrup flavour with a few tiny pieces of fruit. Coffee and matcha cake we ordered also tasted really bad. Not worth it, would have rather tolerated the heat...