Saryo Housen — Restaurant in Kyoto

Unfair customer treatment in Saryou Housen! Japan has been our favorite holiday destination for ages! For our first post-Covid trip, we chose Japan again! However, while Japan is open to the tourists globally, this tea house is not! We visited this place yesterday afternoon, was quite impressed by the peaceful garden view and spacious setting. When finishing the afternoon tea, a waitress told my Japanese speaking friend that another customer complained about us because we wore “strong” perfume, and asked us to pay attention! The store manager also mentioned that strong scent is banned in the house. This is ridiculous and unacceptable! First of all, if you have a rule like that, you should post it publicly (although again this sounds ridiculous); secondly if our one spray of aroma was so strong, you should have stopped us before assigning seats to us! Thirdly, what is the purpose of telling us this? In fact, the tea house was full of a strong smoky-smell mosquito repellent, making it impossible for the scent of any perfume to stand out; the timing of the warning was tricky too - it was a while after the other customer left, and when we just finished the tea set. Being a global frequent traveler, I have never heard that wearing perfume is banned in any store or restaurant! And how come one customer can be warned simply because another customer does not like his/her smell!

I am shocked and extremely disappointed with how the tea house manager and waitress handled the foreign tourists! This experience definitely left a scar in our fantastic memory of Japan and its world...

This used to be my favorite wagashi place in Kyoto. However,the service we received today was totally unacceptable. I remembered two years ago we could move around freely and take pictures of its beautiful garden, but today we were told that we can only stay in our seats. Actually, we are perfectly okay with this new policy. The problem is that the waitress who informed us about this was REALLY rude (with that pejorative “sit down please” shout and a scornful facial expression). The store was almost empty at that time, and we thought we could move around since we wouldn’t disturb other customers. After finishing our desserts, we stayed a bit longer to take some more pictures of the café. But soon the waitress came and forced us out with a lot of exaggerated “thank you” cries. At that time it was only 16:47 (the store closes at 17:00 but after 16:45 they won’t take any extra orders). I have to admit that I felt deeply insulted and discriminated. As a Japanese salon de the with such high prices, I believe that they should have hired more well-trained servers. In sum, I WILL NEVER EVER recommend this place to people from Asian countries other than Japan (in fact I don’t really now if European or American people will be treated like this since there were only three other Japanese customers in the...

Just WOW! What a memorable and beautiful experience at Saryo Housen- the location and building itself is worth the visit, you get to fully experience the traditional tatami mat rooms and Japanese garden. The staff were so kind and welcoming and the service was impeccable. After ordering at the entrance we were showed to our table- the atmosphere is quiet and relaxing. Some tea and traditional Japanese sweets were waiting for us at our table as we arrived and shortly after our delicious treats came. I ordered the 「抹茶和菓子セット」 and got to choose which beautiful wagashi I wanted. The presentation of our order was stunning, simple and encompassed the wabisabi nature of the place. It was a delicious pairing, and an aesthetically pleasing one of course. Got to taste some delicious matcha and traditional namagashi and took some beautiful pictures. If you decide to come here, please be respectful of the building and other customers- it’s a super zen place, very different from the more chaotic and touristy cafes in the city centre- so just enjoy the environment and...