15 Best Sushi Restaurants in Kyoto: Top Must-Try Places

Historically, Kyoto was never known for sushi. As a landlocked prefecture, the old imperial capital had no access to ports, making it difficult to transport fresh seafood inland — unlike the bayside Tokyo, where sushi exploded in popularity as a “fast food” in the late Edo era. 

However, the wonders of modern refrigeration and rapid mechanized transportation means that sushi is now freely available in the historic former capital. In fact, some of Japan’s finest sushi restaurants are widely recognized to be in Kyoto, even among the most discerning members of Japan’s sushi connoisseur community. 

Still, Kyoto never developed its own “style” of sushi, unlike the ubiquitous Edomae school that arose from the Tokyo Bay waterfront. As such, even Kyoto’s finest sushi restaurants are still by and large from the Edomae school, due to most of their chefs having learned their craft in Tokyo.

So if you’ve got a hankering for fish over rice after weaving through the orange torii gates of the Fushimi-Inari Shrine, or wandering the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest in the twilight, we’ve got just the guide for you. 

Starting the list out strong is KYO SUSHI OOKINI, which has been active in Gion for over 20 years. Operating on the principle that food is medicine, its head chef and owner Murata Tsutomu — a certified dietary education instructor by the city of Kyoto — puts particular care into choosing his ingredients. 

The restaurant’s location in the Saiin district, near the Kyoto City Central Wholesale Market, allows him to choose the freshest seafood available; only wild-caught will suffice for Chef Murata, no farmed fish allowed. Meanwhile, all vegetables in his menus are organic, nourished with the iconic Kyoto spring water, and the salt is chemical-free, made from 100% seawater. The restaurant’s Gifu-grown miso, meanwhile, is certified pesticide-free as well.

Interestingly for a restaurant that specializes in sushi, Chef Murata’s signature dish is actually a plate of mugwort (yomogi) pasta, which is as good for the body as it is for the taste buds. Every dish in his menu is the product of not just years of studying nutrition, but also more than four decades of experience in kyo-ryori (Kyoto-style cuisine) and nihon-ryori (traditional seasonal Japanese cuisine). 

The best part? Its affordability. Chef Murata keeps his prices comparatively low to allow for as many guests as possible to enjoy his cuisine — so don’t hesitate to make a reservation.

Gion is loaded full of sushi restaurants, with several Michelin hall of famers among their ranks. Among their ranks, OBENKEI Kyoto Gion may not hold such lofty accolades, but it still enjoys its fair share of dedicated fans.

Why is this the case? OBENKEI Kyoto Gion’s value proposition is one of the more unique ones in Gion: Not only is it one of the more affordable restaurants in the district, but it also uses the majority of its ingredients from Niigata Prefecture, one of the northern Tohoku region’s breadbaskets that borders the Sea of Japan. 

Niigata’s Sado Island in particular is renowned for the quality of its seafood, produce and other ingredients, and these are used in abundance at OBENKEI Kyoto Gion. All rice used in the shari at the restaurant is 100% Sado Koshihikari, while the variety of seafood is abundant, thanks to the meeting of warm and cold currents off the Sado coast. 

You can’t mention Niigata without sake in the same breath, and sure enough, OBENKEI Kyoto Gion has its famous sake in spades. No less than 15 different types are on sale at any given time, many of them from some of the most renowned breweries in the prefecture.

Sushi Gion Matsudaya is a former Michelin-starred restaurant tucked away in a back alley near Hanamikoji Street, in the geisha district of Gion. While it no longer holds its one star, this has done little to stem the tide of visitors: years later, reviews online continue to rave about the immaculate skill of head chef and owner Matsudaya Kazunori, and his wonderful hospitality.

Originally from the neighboring prefecture of Shiga, Chef Matsudaya started his restaurant in Gion in 2007, and since then, his seven counter seats have been full every day. 

Many restaurants have come and gone, each offering Edomae-style sushi, but Gion Matsudaya remains a mainstay of the Kyoto sushi scene, delighting guests with nigiri and various dishes, including his famous eggs, which are his signature.

Worried about interacting with the man himself? Not to worry — a year in New York has given Chef Matsudaya all he needs to charm his customers in English. Grab a glass of sake at his recommendation; it’s said that he has some of the rarest sake in the city, if not the country.

Find out more: Where Gourmet Meets Geisha: 9 of Gion’s Best Restaurants

The former holder of a Michelin star, Gion Sushi Tadayasu is arguably one of the most renowned sushi restaurants in the whole of Kyoto. 

Set in what used to be a townhouse just off Hanamikoji Street, Kyoto’s most famous geisha district, guests ducking under the noren curtain are immediately wowed by the intricacy of the traditional interiors, boasting walls inlaid with wooden carvings and a ceiling with a carved wooden lattice.

But the only thing that Chef Tadayasu Morita — a 20-year-plus veteran of Tokyo’s sushi scene — puts more detail into is the sushi he sculpts by hand. He only uses red vinegar for his shari rice, in true Edomae fashion, using a stronger variety for fatty fish like maguro. 

His signature dish is a generous helping of shiro-ebi white shrimp, with a dollop of caviar on top. All this is served with his characteristic friendly demeanor — so disarming, in fact, that many visitors are taken off guard. 

Where Tokyo is famous for sushi, Kyoto is far more famous for traditional kappo and kaiseki multicourse dining — the Michelin Guide has listed a staggering 118 of them in Kyoto.

Sushi Rakumi is the descendant of one of these restaurants, the indomitable three-starred Gion Sasaki, which is possibly the most famous kaiseki restaurant in existence. 

Situated on the banks of the Shirakawa River, on the northern side of the Gion district, Rakumi’s Michelin star (an award that surprised nobody, given its parentage) brings flocks of visitors to its counter, but especially so in spring, where the dramatic sight of blushing cherry blossoms and swaying willow trees line the river.

It doesn’t matter how far he has to travel: Chef Nomura Kazuya sources his seafood from the local Nishiki Market and Osaka’s Central Fish Market, or even as far as Yaizu Port in Shizuoka. 

Nothing but the best goes into his sushi; you can really taste the freshness in his inventive signature, the abalone risotto, which uses abalone stewed for more than six hours, making it incredibly tender. The dish also uses red-vinegared rice in place of the usual risotto rice, like a giant serving of nigiri. 

Not everyone can be a sushi chef — not everyone has the time to spend honing the skills to shape a perfectly shaped nugget of shari rice, or cross-hatching a tiny piece of bigfin squid.

At AWOMB though, you can at least live out the fantasy of being one. AWOMB specializes in what it calls “teori sushi”, or, literally, hand-woven sushi. 

Guests are presented with a huge array of 50 ingredients, sourced locally from around the Kyoto area, from various types of seafood to meat to the vegetables that Kyoto’s famously pure spring water lends its flavor to, and allowed to craft their own sushi. 

In the minimalist space of the main Karasuma outlet, there are no rules; the layout of the store is extremely sparse, like a blank canvas, representing the infinite possibilities of teori sushi. So get out there and bring those possibilities to life. 

When you think of sushi, you usually think of the iconic nigiri, a slice of fish atop a lump of shari rice; or maybe the gunkan, a flat cylinder, placed upright, of toppings and rice encircled by a sheet of nori; or perhaps the maki, a long roll of sushi usually sliced into six or eight sections.

The sushi at Kashiwai is none of these things. A recipient of the Michelin Bib Gourmand — meaning food that’s both delicious and cost-effective — Kashiwai serves what is traditionally called temari-zushi; ball-shaped, bite-sized sushi that is unique to Kyoto. 

Temari-zushi are shaped the way they are so geisha could eat them in a single bite without smudging their lipstick or makeup. Renaming these little balls “tsumami-zushi”, or “snack sushi”, Kashiwai incorporates local ingredients into their menu, such as bamboo shoots or matsutake mushroom. 

Never mind the fact that it’s a Michelin restaurant; the fact that it’s so drastically different from the Edomae standard makes it worth a try in the first place. The hand-drawn menu is particularly charming — and in English, too.

Find out more: Find Your New Favorite Among These Different Types of Sushi

Another Kyoto institution, Izuu has been serving sushi for almost 250 years and eight generations. To avoid spoilage as it traveled southward from Wakasa City in Fukui Prefecture, mackerel was preserved in vinegar and lightly fermented. Wrapped in konbu kelp and placed atop rice, this was the birth of saba sushi, or literally “mackerel sushi”.

Izuu expands on this by serving saba-sugata sushi; a whole roll of saba sushi that is made from an entire filet of mackerel. This is a popular souvenir that locals often take away several boxes of. 

However, the best experience can be had dining in, where visitors are granted access to the whole menu, and can explore the whole gamut of fermented sushi that Izuu offers. 

In his interview with the Michelin Guide, former hurdler Chef Kawano Mitsutaka likens sushi-making to hurdling: that both require the practitioner to deliver the best performance in the shortest possible time. 

It’s been nine years since opening — not exactly short — but Chef Kawano’s restaurant, Sushi Kawano, has newly received the Michelin nod in 2024 to join the ranks of the Michelin Selected. 

It’s only a matter of time before he receives his first star, so his regulars have already started flooding his reservations before he becomes fully fledged — which will make a seat at his counter an order of magnitude more difficult to secure.

The restaurant is a 10-minute walk from Kitaoji Station, which is where one of the previous entries on this list — Kashiwai — can be found. Its location near the Kamo River makes it a popular spot for sightseers looking to walk off a sumptuous meal on the riverbanks, be it on a warm sunny afternoon or evening.

Like its fellow Michelin Bib Gourmand awardees above, Izuu, Izugen similarly specializes in Kyoto’s traditional preserved sushi, saba sushi, and saba-sugata sushi as well. 

Chef Ishida Yasuyuki works almost silently behind the counter at his shop near Nishiki Market, a third-generation chef whose operation has been delighting customers for over 100 years; the complex flavors and simple presentation of each sushi speak for themselves. 

Saba sushi aside, the peculiarly shaped hakozushi, or “box sushi”, is an easy favorite as well. Interestingly, the rice is cooked in dashi stock, giving it its own umami and a completely different dimension of flavor, especially compared to standard Edomae-style sushi. 

His taciturn nature doesn’t mean he’s unfriendly though: take it from his regulars, who still receive personal deliveries from the man himself by bike, even in this day and age. 

Not to be confused with a similarly-named restaurant originally from Tokyo (called Kyoto Sushi Matsumoto, near Karasuma-Shichijo), Sushi Matsumoto is a relatively recent addition to the Michelin Guide, first receiving its star in 2022 — and making it one of the last remaining Michelin-starred sushi restaurants in Kyoto.

Like many of the finest restaurants in Kyoto, Sushi Matsumoto is located in the geisha district of Gion. 

Originally from Kanazawa, head chef Matsumoto Daisuke trained in the Tokyo restaurant Shinbashi Shimizu before falling in love with Kyoto on a trip there, eventually deciding to set up shop there on the advice of one of his guests from Osaka.

Now one of the premier sushi restaurants in Kyoto, Chef Matsumoto delights Edomae sushi enthusiasts with his 17-item menu, including some of his signatures like straw-grilled skipjack tuna sprinkled with spring onion. Most of his seafood still comes from his suppliers in Tsukiji Market, truly bringing a taste of the new capital to the old. 

Formerly called Sushi Saeki, this restaurant used to be located in the grounds of Nanzenji Temple in 2018, but has since relocated to a new, more central location somewhere halfway between Nijo Castle and Marutamachi Station. 

It may have given up the idyllic surroundings of the temple grounds, but it brings with it the legacy of quality sushi it has had since its beginnings in Osaka, where it was known to be among the top restaurants in Kitashinchi — no mean feat for Kansai’s greatest concentration of fine dining establishments. 

One thing is certain though: the restaurant is still incredibly difficult to secure a reservation for. Not even the expansion of the restaurant to an additional Tokyo branch — a longtime dream for its founder Saeki Hiroshi — has reduced the number of people looking to reserve a seat. 

There is no waitlist, either; just a lot of fevered prayers among those that hope to one day duck beneath its entrance’s curtain. It’s strangely fitting for a city with as many sacred sites as Kyoto does.

Interestingly for a sushi restaurant — or for any Japanese restaurant for that matter — one of the most interesting things about Roji Tonomoto is the fact that its chef will explain nothing to you as you dine at his counter. 

He is more than willing to make conversation about anything that isn’t the food, of course. But the whole point of Tonomoto is to go in with no preconceived notions about the food — the most he will say is that the rice is prepared with Chidori vinegar and the salt is Moshio salt, harvested by drying out hondawara seaweed. Other than that, nothing; food should be enjoyed with the eyes and the taste buds only, he explains. 

To that effect, every dish is exquisitely plated, and served on intricately painted traditional Oribe ware, almost all of which is fired in local Kyoto kilns. But the atmosphere is also just as carefully cultivated; when it comes to the dining experience, the staff also pays special attention to the surroundings.

Each carefully considered design element comes together to form an immaculately serene atmosphere of natural wood and warm, inviting lighting. An array of softly glowing lanterns lines the corridor that leads up to the restaurant’s delicately manicured tsubo-niwa garden. 

The Gion outlet of Sushi Nakamura in Roppongi may be somewhat lesser-known than its Tokyo counterpart, but that doesn’t mean its food is any less worthy of praise. The Kyoto establishment is headed by a chef who started out in French cuisine, and later spent a substantial amount of time in the kitchen of the famed Kyoto Kitcho Arashiyama, one of the most prestigious restaurants in Arashiyama. 

The Edomae-style sushi here is just as good as any as you’ll find in Tokyo; aside from receiving its fish from suppliers in the capital’s own Toyosu Market — including from legendary tuna wholesaler Yamayuki, no less! — the chef also puts his own local spin on the Edomae tradition by using local Kyoto fish from the prefecture’s northern coast. All this in a fantastically atmospheric space filled with gorgeous ikebana flower arrangements that change weekly, and a massive window at the end of the counter that shows the ever-changing landscape of Gion.

Sushi Gion Nakamura also benefits from being on Gion Shirakawa, a street just off the bustling Gion Hanamikoji. Consequently, its counter seating is not as hotly contested as omakase sushi restaurants on Gion’s most famous avenue, but it’s still convenient enough to enjoy all the advantages thereof, such as proximity to many of Kyoto’s most famous sights.

In comparison to the stiff, formal atmosphere that can sometimes accompany omakase restaurants, a meal at the wildly famous Sushi Taka is surprisingly easygoing, in spite of its former Michelin Bib Gourmand status in the Michelin Guide Kyoto 2017. Chef Kinugawa Yoshitomo stands behind the counter in a bright orange t-shirt, in contrast to the starched white chef’s attire that most sushi chefs wear. 

For those brave enough, try the signature dish, appropriately called the namida roll, or “roll of tears”. Sure enough, the sight alone is enough to reduce some to tears; a roll of negitoro (minced tuna and green onions) absolutely smothered with a bed of freshly grated hon-wasabi. 

Yet many who have braved this grotesque-looking greenery have noted, to their surprise, that it’s not as spicy as it looks, with Sushi Taka’s tuna so gloriously fatty that it offsets the burn. Another standout is the the kakiage, or tempura fritters; a rarity for a sushi restaurant.

Of course, as any self-respecting sushi restaurant does, Sushi Taka has plenty of fine sake for aficionados to take their pick from, ranging from neighboring Nara’s finest to those from local breweries. But to many who are familiar with Chef Kinugawa Yoshitomo, the correct answer is actually to get a glass of tequila — the man himself recommends Olmeca.

For a closer look into the world of Kyoto’s cuisine, explore the best omakase sushi restaurants, the best Michelin Star restaurants, and what to eat in Kyoto. Or simply browse through our list of all sushi restaurants in Kyoto.

Other than Kyoto’s underrated sushi scene, Kyoto is known for multicourse kaiseki cuisine, traditional tea ceremonies and wagashi sweets, and the vegetarian-friendly Buddhist cuisine of shojin ryori.

Kyoto isn’t really known for street food in the same way as some places, such as Osaka, so it borrows many of these most popular street foods. For example, there’s the bite-sized takoyaki octopus balls, hearty okonomiyaki cabbage pancakes and deep-fried anago conger eel.

Discover Kyoto’s street foods.