What to eat in Kyoto

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• What else should the list cover? Desserts and pastriesNon-alcoholic drinksLocal alcohol

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1. Try obanzai

   Kyoto home cooking: several vegetable and fish dishes prepared in advance and served from communal bowls. Small portions, many dishes, everything seasonal.

   Look for wooden tubs and bowls on the counter, with the dishes on display. An obanzai lunch set costs a fraction of kaiseki and follows the same logic.

2. Try yudofu

   Tofu simmered in hot water with kombu and served with soy sauce and condiments. A temple dish where everything depends on the tofu and the water.

   Look near Nanzen-ji and in Arashiyama, where it has been served for centuries. The tofu here is firmer and clearly tastes of soy rather than of nothing.

3. Try yuba

   The skin lifted from the surface of heated soy milk: delicate and nutty, served fresh with soy sauce or in a broth. A Kyoto speciality.

   Fresh yuba is much better than dried; go where it is lifted in front of you. It appears as a starter, in kaiseki and in shojin ryori.

4. Try shojin ryori

   Buddhist temple cooking without meat, fish, onion or garlic: tofu, yuba, seasonal vegetables, seaweed and sesame. Entirely vegan and highly technical.

   It is served in temples and specialist restaurants, usually at lunch and by reservation. Sesame tofu, goma-dofu, is the most recognisable dish on this table.

5. Try nishin soba

   Buckwheat noodles in broth with a whole dried herring simmered in a sweet soy glaze. A Kyoto dish, invented in a city without a sea from imported dried fish.

   The herring is sweet and soft, its bones dissolved by long simmering. The broth is Kansai style: pale and less salty than Tokyo's.

6. Try saba-zushi

   Pressed sushi of cured mackerel wrapped in kombu, cut into thick blocks. It comes from the Saba Kaido, the road along which fish travelled to the city salted.

   The mackerel is cured rather than raw, giving a firm sour flavour. It is sold in specialist shops and taken on journeys; it keeps longer than nigiri.

7. Try Kyoto pickles

   Pickles made from local vegetables: senmaizuke turnip, shibazuke aubergine and others. They come with rice and fill whole rows of the Nishiki market.

   Senmaizuke is a winter pickle; shibazuke is bright purple from red shiso. The market offers tastings before you buy, which is standard.

8. Try hamo in summer

   A conger-like eel full of fine bones, which are cut through with a thousand knife strokes, served blanched with plum sauce. A summer delicacy and the symbol of July in Kyoto.

   The season is June and July, during the Gion festival. The flesh blooms into a white flower when blanched, which shows the bone cutting was done right.

9. Try Kyo-yasai vegetables

   Local heirloom varieties — shogoin turnip, kamo aubergine, manganji pepper, bamboo shoots — grown here for centuries, each with its own season and method.

   Rakusai bamboo shoots are a spring thing, March to April, and expensive. Vegetables here are often the main dish rather than a side.

10. Walk the Nishiki market

    A narrow covered street of shops selling pickles, tofu, dried fish, sweets and fried snacks. It runs from the morning, and most stalls close by six.

    Eating while walking is frowned on; you take a portion and finish it at the stall. Many shops close on Wednesdays, which is worth planning around.

11. Try wagashi Desserts and pastries

    Traditional sweets of bean paste and rice flour, changing shape and name with the season. Eaten with bitter tea, which is what makes their sweetness make sense.

    The sweetness is calibrated to matcha, so on their own they taste cloying. Old confectioners change the range every fortnight.

12. Try yatsuhashi Desserts and pastries

    Triangles of soft rice dough with cinnamon and bean paste inside, the best-known Kyoto souvenir. A baked crisp version exists too.

    The soft nama version does not keep long; the baked one lasts months. Shops offer tastings of both, and taking them is normal.

13. Try warabimochi Desserts and pastries

    A translucent jelly of bracken starch rolled in kinako soy flour and drizzled with dark syrup. A summer dessert, served chilled.

    The real bracken starch version costs more and is noticeably softer than the potato starch one. Eat it the same day; overnight it stiffens.

14. Drink Uji matcha Non-alcoholic drinks

    Powdered green tea from nearby Uji, whisked to a foam. Bitter and thick, served with one small sweet, which is eaten before the tea.

    The sweet comes before the tea rather than after; it prepares the palate. Turning the bowl before drinking is the custom, though no café will insist.

15. Try hojicha and genmaicha Non-alcoholic drinks

    Hojicha is roasted green tea, almost caffeine-free with a caramel note; genmaicha is green tea with toasted rice. Both are gentler than sencha.

    Hojicha is an evening tea precisely because of the low caffeine. Both are sold loose in the city's old tea shops.

16. Try Fushimi sake Local alcohol

    Sake from the Fushimi district: soft and rounded thanks to the local soft water, unlike the sharper sake of Nada. One of the country's two main brewing centres.

    Fushimi breweries run tasting rooms pouring flights of three to five. The softness of the water is the same factor that shapes the tofu.