Funaokayama Shimizu

In 2018, when Yuki Shimizu was looking for somewhere to open his restaurant, one of the things he wanted nearby was a well. He had trained at Wakuden and Kyoyamato, and knew what he wanted from the rice he’d serve under his own name. The water he wanted came from Daitoku-ji, the Zen temple that has had a hand in Kyoto’s tea culture for centuries. Shimizu found a place in the residential streets between the temple and Mount Funaoka. The water would have a short commute.

The entrance is a black iron path and a door of pale ash. Beyond it are seven seats. In-Ex Design, the architects, had a cave in mind after their first conversations with Shimizu. They used mortar, ash and stainless steel, materials that could sound rather severe in a list. The pale wood does a great deal to change that. So does the counter, which puts everyone close enough to watch the work. There’s a particular pleasure in sitting down to dinner and finding that the best view in the room is of someone doing his job.

Some of that job happens well before anyone sits down. Shimizu buys vegetables from growers in Takagamine and goes to Kyoto’s Central Market for ingredients from farther afield. The rice can come from anywhere in Japan, depending on which grain he chooses. The water comes from a few streets away. The two meet in a donabe, an earthenware pot. By the time the rice reaches the counter, the humblest thing on the table turns out to be the one that helped decide where the table would be.

Mount Funaoka once held a fortress during the Ōnin War. A shrine to the warlord Oda Nobunaga stands on its summit today. That’s a fair amount of history for a hill only 112 metres high. At its foot is a more recent bit of Kyoto history, on the scale of seven people at a counter. For an evening at Shimizu’s, the city comes down to a few growers, a market, a temple well and the good fortune of being there when the lid comes off.