Toriiki Sanjo — Restaurant in Kyoto

We wandered down here looking for an open spot and were not disappointed. We're tourists from Canada and were treated very warmly. The menu is in japenese, but not a problem with google lens these days, and the important bits are written in English (ie. to please order a drink, but non alcoholic options are plentiful)

There's a bright colourful picture on the menu of a sukiyaki/hot pot style soup, and there's a helpful "two person" option, so we happily ordered that. It is a chicken soup served with old and young chicken, lots of vegetables, and mushrooms. They helpfully prepared it at the table for us, and told us how to eat it. We also got chicken skewer which was delightfully seasoned. The soup is flavoured with sanjo pepper, giving everything a pleasantly numbing floral citrus flavour. You get extra at the table which was delicious on the skewer. Everything was delicious.

All service was very patient with us, and described everything with gestures, made sure everything was prepared properly at the table, and overall took great care of us. Highly recommend...

Very healthy meal to warm you up during the winter. They don’t have an English menu but feel free to use this to order your chicken skewers (yakitori). The waitress use hand gestures to help us: mo mo (chicken thigh) tebasaki (chicken wings) ha tsu (chicken heart) re ba (chicken liver) if you see ねぎ　negi anywhere it’s just leek

The hot pot consisted of a homemade wholesome chicken broth with many vegetables like mizuna, pea tips, various mushrooms, ginger flower, and more. There’s “young chicken” and “mature chicken” cuts.

Drank a lot of soup? No worries as there’s a cute bathroom 🚽 at the start of the stairs.

Tip: each table upstairs has a CALL button so you don’t have to run downstairs to get the waitress. We learned this along the way, thanks to the patient staff.

They accept credit card 💳...

FYI they have a Japanese menu, 1 drink minimum and a customary table fee of 350 yen. They seemed cautious of tourists who may have different expectations of the place but after we said "ok" we were happily given a table. Google lens and pictures were our friend for the menu and everything we ordered was delicious. This is not a place "for tourists" but everyone was extremely welcoming and we had multiple chefs come up to talk to us and help us set up our meal correctly. Don't expect English service but you can expect delicious food and...