Monk

At the foot of Mount Zenki and a short walk south of the famed Ginkaku-ji Temple is one of the most famous restaurants in Kyoto, if not the whole of Japan, thanks to its appearance on the Netflix television series Chef’s Table: Pizza, and a nod on the list of Best 50 Restaurants in Japan. It’s a Kyoto restaurant in every sense of the word; it even lies among the famous Philosopher’s Path, or Tetsugaku no Michi, one of the most famous riverside paths in the whole city. Yet in spite of its obviously Shinto-inspired name and location amongst some of Kyoto’s most famous temples, Monk’s specialty is distinctly Italian. Its owner-chef Imai Yoshihiro founded it in 2015 with the intention of returning to the roots of cooking: simple fireside cuisine with local, seasonal ingredients. To that end, he still travels every morning to the farmer’s markets in northern Kyoto’s Ohara City to procure fresh produce, ranging from Kyoto-grown spinach and turnips, to mushrooms foraged in the surrounding foothills, to even wild boar from local hunters. These ingredients are then placed in the restaurant’s most distinctive feature: its massive clay-domed wood-fired oven. It’s here that the restaurant’s famous pizzas are born. The signature is the Spanish mackerel with nanohana rape blossoms, so fragrant that it doesn’t even need sauce. It’s a snug restaurant, with intimate table seating meant to encourage people to socialize — very different from what its namesake might suggest. There’s a standard tasting menu, but guests who want to add any a la carte dishes won’t have any issues: the menus are all in English, and the staff are fluent enough to answer any questions.