For the Slightly Adventurous Minds

We were looking for a casual place to meet up with some friends, and St John Bread and Wine came to mind, for it's only a short hop away on the tube for all of us.

The restaurant - an offshoot of Fergus Henderson's Michelin-starred St John - is right across the street from the hip and trendy Spitalfields Market. The bright and minimally-decorated dining room was already filled with people eating and drinking when we arrived in the early evening and staff inside the open kitchen at the far end was in full action cooking and plating.

Ametsa with Arzak Instruction

I thought part of the reason why our lunch at Dinner by Heston didn't fare as much as the hype was because it's overshadowed by our lunch at Ametsa the day before. Similar to Dinner which was backed by a chef who owned a Michelin 3-starred restaurant, behind Ametsa was Juan Mari and Elena Arzak, who owned the 3-starred Arzak in San Sebastian in the Basque Country (of Spain), which we had a chance to visit a few years back. This London outpost of theirs was rated as one-star in its own right in the latest Michelin guide.

Summertime Chicken Hotpot in Kyoto

With our flight schedule to touch down only in early morning at Osaka airport, we didn't make any specific plan for lunch in Kyoto on our first day, for fear of the possibility of a flight delay. Nonetheless, I did have a specific restaurant in mind - I just figure we would just try my luck walking in if all things went well.

Toriyasa (鳥彌三) is a 227-year-old Kyoto restaurant specialized in Tori no Mizudaki, or essentially chicken hotpot, now already in its 8th generation owner at the beautiful street of Kiyamachi by the Kamo river. We arrived at Kyoto right on schedule so after quickly settling in at our hotel near Sanjo, we made a leisurely stroll towards the riverside area where the restaurant is located.