Kyoto's Nishiki Market: the old capital's kitchen

Nishiki is a 400-metre covered street with over 130 stalls, and Kyoto calls it "the city's kitchen" — not as a slogan, but because the kaiseki restaurants nearby still buy here every morning. The problem is that three quarters of the stalls sell things a visitor can't identify, and that don't look especially appetising either.

That's where a guide earns their keep. Tsukemono — Kyoto-style pickles, each vegetable with its own method and season; you need three or four before you understand how a whole shop survives selling only pickles. Yuba — tofu skin lifted off simmering soy milk, temple food from the vegetarian centuries. Dried dashi stock, shaved bonito, tofu made and sold the same day. Interspersed with things you eat on the spot: grilled scallop skewers, Kyoto tamagoyaki (sweeter than Tokyo's), dense matcha ice cream.

You finish holding the hardest idea in Japanese cooking: that Kyoto's core flavour isn't salt or spice but dashi — a stock so restrained newcomers assume it's unseasoned. The kaiseki you eat that evening will taste like a different meal.