Kyoto breakfast buffet with all-you-can-eat sushi: One of the best possible ways to start a day

Rise and shine for this spread of delicious regional specialties and locally grown vegetables that’s offered to hotel guests and non-guests alike.

It’s often said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that often goes double when you’re traveling. If you’ve got a full day of sightseeing planned, followed by a night of checking out the local bar and club scene, breakfast is your best chance to eat a balanced, nutritional meal before switching over to street food and bar snacks for lunch and dinner.

That doesn’t mean breakfast can’t also be deliciously awesome, though, and as proof, let’s head over to the Ariston Hotel Kyoto Jujo, in, just like the name says, Kyoto.

▼ Entrance to the Ariston Hotel Kyoto Jujo

The hotel is a short walk from Jujo subway station, which is just a three-minute ride from Kyoto Station, the city’s primary transportation hub. But the real appeal starts before you even step outside the building, because the Ariston Jujo has an amazing all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet that includes unlimited sushi and dishes made with locally grown Kyoto vegetables.

Starting things off with the star, the first thing we grabbed was a few pieces of sabazushi, Kyoto’s signature sushi dish made with mackerel. While some all-you-can-eat sushi deals slice their fish extra-thin, the Ariston gives you luxuriously thick cuts.

The fish isn’t entirely raw, but rather seared, giving the outside layer a subtle but enticing crispness. Beneath the surface, though, the fish remains moist and flavorful, which are also things you can say about the vinegared rice that forms the foundation of each piece.

The buffet also has a wide variety of Kyoyasai, as Kyoto proudly calls its locally grown vegetable produce. These are served in a number of different dishes that are meant to be eaten in combination with one another, which are collectively known as obanzai.

▼ These Fushimi peppers, harvested near Fushimi Inari Shrine, were one of our favorite parts of the meal.

The buffet also offers items that might be more immediately accessible to those with more Western palates, though even some of these have a slight Japanese twist, like the egg sandwiches made with dashimaki tamago, sweet Japanese omelets.

▼ Steamed chicken with carpaccio-style dressing – so good we went back for a second helping.

The buffet even gives you the opportunity to be creative with its customizable ochazuke station, where you start by scooping rice into a bowl, adding your choice of toppings…

…and then pouring on a hot broth to make a tasty, fortifying porridge-like dish.

In Kyoto, ochazuke is traditionally served at the end of the meal, and after polishing off ours, we were ready to head out and spend the morning exploring, confident that we had enough high-quality food in our stomach to last us until the afternoon. Oh, and the Ariston Jujo’s buffet is available to hotel guests and walk-in customers alike, for 1,500 yen (US$14), so it’s still a viable breakfast option even if you’ve opted to stay somewhere else, like maybe in Kyoto’s cheapest guest house.

Hotel information
Hotel Arsiton Kyoto Jujo / アリストンホテル京都十条
Address: Kyoto-fy, Kyoto-shi, Minami-ku, Kami Tobakanjinbashicho 23
京都府京都市南区上鳥羽勧進橋町23番地
Breakfast served 6:30 a.m.-10 a.m. (seating until 9:30 a.m.)
Website

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