Hyotei

Hyotei started as a roadside teahouse serving travelers to Kyoto's Nanzen-ji temple some four centuries ago, and the same family has kept it ever since — Chef Yoshihiro Takahashi now carries it, around fifteen generations on. You dine in separate little tearooms with thatched roofs, set in a garden so old and so quiet it seems to slow time down, over pure, refined kaiseki rooted in the tea ceremony. Two things are unmissable: the famous "Hyotei egg," a soft-boiled egg made to a secret method and served here for over a century, and the morning porridge, supposedly born when a hungry patron turned up at dawn after a long night out. Three Michelin stars, and a living piece of Kyoto. Few meals carry this much history so lightly.