Fair Food Prices

Food culture

Kyoto's food culture splits into two registers: obanzai, the everyday home-style small plates built around whatever vegetables are in season, and kaiseki, the formal multi-course meal that grew out of the tea ceremony and became Kyoto's best-known export to fine dining elsewhere in Japan. The temple neighborhoods still serve shojin ryori, Buddhist vegetarian cooking that treats simple tofu as a genuine craft, which is part of why a bowl of tofu can cost almost nothing from a market stall and a lot at a temple-adjacent restaurant built entirely around it. Matcha shows a similar spread, since the leaf itself ranges from everyday culinary grade to ceremonial grade, and a shop's sweets or drinks are priced off that grade rather than off portion size.