Vegan Restaurants, Part 3

9. Cafe Proverbs 15:17

We heard about this fantastic vegan restaurant in Kyoto called Cafe Proverbs 15:17.  It was near our ryokan, so we decided to check it out.  I am not the most Bible-literate person, but they translated Proverbs 15:17 into what you see below.  I don't know if it's accurate or not, but the food was awesome.  Dan doesn't normally like vegan food all that much, but this place was great!

 

 

Eggplant tempeh bowl: such a great dish!  The flavoring was done perfectly, and the tempeh took the place of meat very nicely.

 

Soymilk ramen: ramen is really tough to find for vegetarians because even if there's no meat, the broth is meat-based.  This one was amazing.  You know how much I love soymilk broths by now.  :)

Gyoza!

Double-cooked pork with asparagus: Not as good as the real thing, and the sauce was a bit too heavy, but it wasn't horrible.

Desserts here were my favorite part!  They had the usual chocolate cakes, cookies, etc. but they also had very good Asian desserts.  I tried their chocolate and carrot muffins; both were quite good, but these below were much better.

 

Some amazing dessert made out of soymilk.  The top part is sweetened edamame, I believe.  It was so good!  It tasted like a silky milky pudding.  :)

My favorite dessert!  I have been lusting after these parfaits (they are everywhere in Kyoto -- mostly green tea ice cream, mochi, and green tea cake parfaits) and haven't been able to have one.  :(  Luckily, they serve an amazing one here!  Ours was roasted green tea and kinako ice cream, along with mochi, cake, and jelly cubes.  So good!  The ice cream is made in house too.  A must-try for any lactose-intolerant person.  ;)

Baumkuchen

The Japanese love new dessert fads, be it Mister Donut, Krispy Kreme, macarons, or Coldstone Creamery.  One of the biggest fads is baumkuchen, these many-layered cakes.  I've seen people wait in line forever in front of one of the giant department stores.  That store sells really expensive baumkuchen -- a small slice of the cylindrical cake can run you $40!  I guess it's so expensive because it takes a while to make layer after layer?  You can get really cheap ones at the convenience stores as well, so the quality varies greatly.

Anyway, one particular baumkuchen brand was having a sample expo at the Kyoto train station.  We saw people lining up, so we had to get in line as well.  (The Japanese love to queue up!)  

 

The cakes are made on these long metal rods.  This is the end stage, where she puts on some green tea frosting.

 

Sampling time!

 

This particular cake is green tea flavored!

sukiyaki vs. shabu shabu

I could never figure out the difference between sukyaki and shabu-shabu, but Dan wanted to try them both before we left Japan.  We ended up going to a really nice restaurant in Kyoto that specializes in high quality beef.  For some reason, shabu shabu is super expensive in Japan.  I guess they always use high quality beef.  

 

Turns out sukiyaki is beef that's cooked in a soy sauce, sugar, and mirin broth.  It is pretty heavily flavored (slightly sweet), so it goes best with raw egg.  (If you are like me and are slightly freaked out about eating raw eggs, apparently the Japanese have no qualms about it because the regulations on egg cleanliness is very strict!  They don't have problems with salmonella from raw eggs.)  I don't really like sukiyaki because the flavor is a bit too sweet for me.

 

Here is mine!  I got soy milk broth shabu shabu.  (Remember how I said I loved soy milk broths?  :))  Shabu shabu is thusly named because that's the sound your chopsticks make when swishing around in the pot.

 

Here is our premium grade beef for shabu shabu!

Golden Pavilion

Very gold, no?

 

 

 

I have to warn you, this was the nastiest Japanese sweet we got at any tea house.  It's supposed to be a specialty of the Golden Pavilion, but it was just one big nasty hunk of sugar, with a bit of gold lettering.

 

See?  It's pretty, but don't be tricked!

Traditional Japanese breakfast

Ikumatsu served us breakfast the next morning.  You had the choice of either 'traditional' (meaning Japanese) or Western.  Of course we went with the Japanese breakfast.  While I mostly prefer Western breakfasts (bread and coffee and jam, etc.), I couldn't pass up on this opportunity.  We are glad we chose the Japanese breakfast, because the poor old couple next to us had so little food compared to us!  They kept darting envious looks at our huge display.  :)

 

Fresh pot of tofu, soy sauce, seaweed

 

Some broiled tofu, mushrooms, carrots

 

Tamago

 

Also, we had rice, miso soup, pickles, and broiled fish!

Random images from Kyoto

A couple random images from Kyoto...

Real mochi!  The real stuff is made by pounding glutinous rice with this huge hammer.  His partner turns and wets the mochi in between hammer strikes.  The fake stuff is what we normally eat, mochi made from powder.  I like them both.  ;)

 

Hello Kitty stamps!  I couldn't resist buying these; they are the cutest stamps I've ever seen!

 

Scallops from Nishiki market: What an amazing dish!  They cooked the scallop just right, and we got to try all the parts of the scallop, not just the usual meat.  The stem (?) of the scallop was very chewy and quite delicious.

 

Snail: not really my thing, but interesting to try.

Taste of Kyoto

Kyoto is gorgeous in that traditional sense of Japan.  Temples, shrines, old wooden houses and storefronts...here is a small sampling of the beauty.  We did so many temples (Golden Pavilion, Silver Pavilion, San-ju-san, Kiyomizu, etc.) that they all blended together a bit by the end.  If I have the chance, I'll blog a bit about my favorites.

Silver Pavilion grounds: unfortunately, the Silver Pavilion itself was under construction, so we didn't get a good look.  The grounds were gorgeous, though.

Shinkansen to Kyoto

On the busiest travel day of the year, we took the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) with the rest of the Japanese.  Wonderfully speedy train, but for some reason, it made my stomach lurch a bit.  I ended up napping for the majority of the time.  :)  (Of course, I had to post our bentos!)

Isn't she pretty?

Me in a yukata (kind of like a Japanese bathrobe) in our ryokan