Hyotei

For more than 400 years, Hyotei has stood beside Nanzenji temple, its origins as a teahouse where pilgrims once rested by the temple's outer gate. The main building preserves its original thatched-roof teahouses, including a four-and-a-half-mat room and a hall with a distinctive round window, each opening onto a Japanese garden that has matured alongside the restaurant for centuries. Guests come for refined kaiseki built on tea-ceremony principles, most famously the restaurant's soft-simmered Hyotei tamago egg, alongside seasonal specialties like summer's asagayu rice porridge and winter's quail porridge. A separate annex with table seating serves porridge and shokado bento boxes year-round in a more relaxed format.