Kacho

So after a few days in Tokyo, the decision was to spend the new years and get in touch with our cultural side. We took a bullet train down to Kyoto for 3 days to visit all the hot spots and ended up staying at the Westin Miyako given its proximity to the philosopher’s path. The time of New year’s is a big one it seems for Japanese culture and there were many spots closed down to take the well needed rest before kicking up the new year. Based on timing and availability we decided to go with the restaurant in the hotel and eat Japanese Hot Pot at Kancho. I know that hotel restaurants are not typically my «go to» but I figured it was asia so restaurants should be on point. We were heading over to the Kyo In Temple to watch the monks ring the bell for the new year so we wanted something hot and filling to get us through the night.
After checking in, we made our way down to the restaurant floor and were greeted promptly for our reservation. We decided to go with the Sukiyaki menu as we had primarily had a lot of seafood while in Tokyo. We of course ordered a hot sake to cheers to the new year. The waitresses were all in kimonos and working quickly to serve the restaurant which was popping. The English was also not bad dependent on the person you had but even my broken Japanese was able to get us through our meal with no issues. They first brought out a set of 5 small bite size appetizers with an array of Japanese side dishes. This ranged from salmon roe, tofu, veggies, etc. All of the small bites were good although some of them were a tad strong on the tongue from either a salty or sour perspective. After clearing through this, they brought out a plate of sashimi. The sashimi was not as fresh as I had in Tokyo but nevertheless the quality was good. They then brought out the hot pot to where they heated up the surface and tossed in the veggies and the layers of meat after making the base «soup» concoction. The waitresses would tell us when the meet was ready to be consumed. The Dish was OK for me and a few reasons for that. The sauce itself was a bit salty which drowned out the flavors of the meat and the other ingredients. The veggies were fine as well but as the main star is supposed to be the meat it was an OK. After eating the meat, they brought out noodles to be cooked in the broth which was of course delicious (probably because I have a bias towards noodles). At the end they gave ice cream and some fruits. All of this surprisingly was fairly expensive costing well around $ 200 which seemed like a reach.
All in all, an OK experience for me but if it was not new years and everything was not closed, I would have probably searched for other alternatives. For those that may decide to stay in the future on new year’s just know that there are many street festival food stands so don’t feel you have to settle on a hotel restaurant.