Kura Kura in Kyoto

The food (japanese tapas) was delicious, a little bit hard to find, but look for the japanse signs saying kura kura (left of the dim sum place). Also the waiters were really friendly and gave us some extra attention as foreigners who are not able to shout the names of the dishes they would like.

Fantastic meal of a variety of Japanese foods. This is a must if you are near Kyoto Station or staying at the Granvia Hotel. English Menu and staff are extremely helpful! Highly recommended. It is suggested to order 4-5 dishes for 2 people, like Japanese tapas. We enjoyed the Japanese wine here too.

Very disappointing considering the other reviews. Nice little place but food was not great if I'm being honest. We ordered four dishes and the best was the dumplings which were not that great either. Service was very slow too but the plum sake was quite tasty though.

Don’t tell anyone you ate here. This is truly a hidden treasure!!

A cosy Izakaya but you’re going to need to earn it.... it is tricky to find! As a tourist I felt very welcome, the staff spoke some English and there was an English menu to help too. The food was solid, not the best meal I’ve had but I certainly have no complaints at all and would definitely come back again.

The food here is decent but nothing really special. Prices are ok for the quality at 500-1200 yen per dish depending on the order. Nothing I ate really stood out to me personally although the staff is friendly and theres an English menu. Restaurant is a bit hard to find look for the sign that leads to an alley.

Friendly staff, friendly customers. I wasn't sure what to expect when people said the atomosphere was great, but they couldn't be more right. You're going to have a new favorite pub.

One of our best meals in Kyoto, reasonable prices for such huge portions. Staff were nice and attentive, English menus available. Try the grilled sweet potato!

Great atmosphere, good food, a lot of choices for vegetarian, English menu. Everyone is extremely friendly, a very wonderful place. Make sure you call ahead to make a reservation as they are very busy.

Very friendly staff and eager to explain everything. Food was great but some menu are seasonal or easily to run out cause limitation of material. Just a short distance walk from kyoto central station. Money you spend there is worth the foods, drinks and ambience. Better to reserve before to get a seat if not then good luck!

Really nice place! I've visited many japanese style pub, but here is the best place. Food, drink are above average. Especially main chef(maybe owner) is very friendly! I will visit here again whenever I visit Kyoto.

Great place, but a couple things to note:1. Very busy, so get a reservation.2. Not cheap. We paid about $130 dollars and left feeling hungry. The portions are small. About $6 for 3 tiny chicken skewers.3. A good place for a few drinks and a snack or two, but not for dinner. You will spend too much for too little.4. Each order takes a long time. We waited 20-30 minutes for each dish and drink. So we spent a lot of time sitting just waiting at an empty table with empty cups. Overall, a great atmosphere and the food is great, but this was the worst value meal of a 5 week trip.

Real, no frills, great grilled mackerel and chicken dishes. Perfect comfy food.

One of the best Izakayas we have been to! The restaurant has an unique vibe with super friendly staff and amazing food. We had a great evening!

Surprisingly large for a typical tucked-away izakaya. Lengthy menu, everything was delicious, and the chef and hostess actually speak really good English.

Food: Delicious! We tried everything from fish to chicken to mushrooms to eggplant and everything was perfection. Come hungry so you can order and try as much as possible. The mushrooms were a highlight!GREAT ambiance! The place is buzzing and fun. Tip: If you can sit at the bar/grill, do it. It's fun to talk to your neighbors and watch the chef work his magic.

It was pretty hard to find it is on the left side of the steakhouse and you have to go into a small hallway and its very traditional looking they really try hard to help you and its like nothing you will have tryed before Very kind and helpfull people Good foodOne of a kind (its rare)And a must have visit

Amazing place. The staff spoke some good english, even if they did not, they were very attentive and even showed us the food and drink items we enquired about. They showed us the traditional way to drink the different types of Sake we ordered, and even though I have forgotten the names of our food we ordered, it was delivered quickly, looked amazing and tasted out of this world. Even though you may not be in this exact part of Kyoto, I recommend this location for its traditional atmosphere, exceptional staff friendliness and tentativeness and delicious, succulent food.

Great food and atmosphere! Amazing host! Very authentic and positive experience :)

Friendly izakaya, good food, nothing flash. Popular with locals and increasingly with tourists. English not a problem. Smoking is allowed, but if you sit at the bar, the exhaust fans suck the smoke up and the alternative of sitting on the floor is hard for some. Close to Kyoto station. Bookings recommend as always busy.

Bumped into this place down an unexpected back alley Style entrance. Modest and humble decor with amazing food for a reasonable price (not for those travelling students on a budget). Service was the best experienced in Japan so far on our trip and that's saying something.

Hiroshi, the chef, is awesome. Had a great time here sitting at the bar drinking sake, chatting with locals, and trying delicious foods, almost all of which we’d never had before. Would love to go back again

Authentic looking, but bad service, grossly overpriced food, small dishes and average quality. The place is overrun with tourists which may account for the high review rating, however this place is not good value in any way.For example, 12 pcs of very small sized, bottom shelf sashimi for ¥2500. The waitress was inundated with English order requests, her thin command of the English language resulted in very slow service.After receiving an eye watering bill for an insufficient amount of food I asked the waitress about the reason for the excessive prices vs dish size. Her response was that it's expensive because of the quality. So we ventured to a local sushi place and ordered the same as we'd ordered at Kurakura. The quality was far better, price was half and serving size more than double.Stay away from Kurakura

Really nice setting. If you're looking for something that has plenty of locals and that authentic vibe BUT is also not too intimidating (in fact, very welcoming) then you could do a lot worse than here. A lot of the other reviews go WAY overboard on the food. It's fine but won't blow you away. There service and ambiance help compensate for that though.

This place has great atmosphere and the food is also delicious while priced reasonably. The Chef (and possibly the owner) is extremely friendly and tried his best to converse with us in English. Love the hospitality. If I'm ever in Kyoto again I will come back. 100%. I hope this place never changes.

EPIC local eatery. We had the enoki mushrooms in miso which stole our hearts. Very friendly, even to the rare tourist. And the sake selection was excellent.

We had a fun time eating here. The staff was great and loved practicing their English with us. The food was very good and the crowd was mostly friendly locals. We ordered a bunch of small plates and everything was delicious. Highly recommended

We were very lucky with our timing, as a table just got free for us to take, the place was very busy, so reservations should be made in advance. The atmosphere was cozy and fun, and when the food arrived, it tasted amazing, spent several hours there, ordering food and drinks (only 1 of us had alcohol). There was a small misstep in the order, but when the food came, it was worth the wait.

So friendly, and accomodating. Multiple English speaking staff members, foods pretty damn good too. Prepare for an interesting menu. If you want something safe tonkatsu and sauted pork will satisfy. But try to be adventurous. There menu is big.

Awesome Izakaya! Very friendly owners! So much good food, difficult to pick :-)

Cool little izakaya, worth finding...

Super friendly staff & chef, good traditional food, and nice atmosphere all around. On the expensive side if you eat a full meal, but well worth it. Our waiter had a good commend of English ---made the whole experience easy.

Great food and hospitality. We got here at 5.30pm and we took the last bar counter seats. V popular place with locals. Had mixed sashimi, mixed veg tempura, grilled flat fish, rice in chicken stock, omelette, grilled chicken wings, butter clams, grilled shiitake, beer and sake. We paid ¥10900 for 3 pax.

What an amazing place! Such welcoming, friendly hospitality coupled with top notch cuisine!! You'd be silly not to go here if you are in Kyoto

English menu, speak english, great service, amazing food!!Best place I've been to in Japan.

A very good place to meet some locals and enjoy some specialities. Be early because it's get full very quickly !

Chef knows some English and is very nice. Just like any other Izakaya, it's a nice place to be during the late evening. Everything I had was very good, especially the ray fish which you shouldn't be intimidated to try, has slightly hard texture, but fibrous and soft sweet interior with spicy mayo on the side. Prices are reasonable service is good. My orders took a little longer because there was a party of 20 and the chef asked what I had ordered, made it immediately and apologized. Great place to eat!

Great food and experience in a local izayaka! The staff makes you feel like home

Day 6 of our Japan trip, we decided to go to this cozy-looking izakaya place that had thunderous ratings. Phone reservations were simple enough. Let me get to the point for everything you want to know.Location: 2/5. About 15min walk from Kyoto station, but its basically a hole in the wall in a dark back-alley.Food: 3/5. Decent. For having visited many izakayas, this one is at most unimpressive.Price: 2/5. Surprisingly overpriced. 1000¥ for the katsu sticks in the pics. Come on... Overall: 1/5. Not only was our meal expensive and ordinary, service was extremely slow. Waited almost an hour for some of our order. Other foreigners seemed to have a similar problem on the other tables, but I'm not gonna try to correlate. I have absolutely no idea how it has such ratings. I feel like i'm writting about scientology as im writing this review. Don't bother going there.

Delicious food- incredible variety. Japanese tapas-style food. Highly recommend spicy kimchi pork stir-fry!

Very traditional and nice environment! Excellent food! 😊

Fantastic service and delicious food. Thank you. They have an English menu and staff are happy to assist. Really liked the grilled flatfish and calamari.

Quite expensive, pretty sure they didn't serve us the full dishes we ordered, as the cucumber and miso salad was just cucumber...for about £4.50. The salmon rice dish was basically just rice. Seemed very local and authentic though.

I love it! Great ambience, very traditional, good food, great choice if you want to eat like locals, and they speak English! Definitely one of the top places on my list, and will surely go there again whenever I’m in Kyoto.

The food was really good and the portions were really big for the price! The staff was really nice and helpful.I recommend going early because the place is quickly crowded.

The food was very good, the price is fair and the staff is so, so lovely! A true Japanese hospitality and gastronomy experience!

Very good food for a good price, and it seems very authentic. The personnel doesn't speak good English, but they try their best. They were very nice, we even got Japanese hot tee on the house at the end.

Nice cozy feel to the place with English speaking staff. Menu is quite varied mostly consisting of grilled viands, yakitori and rice meals. Sushi menu is decent but options are quite limited compared to a sushi bar. Overall great place to enjoy food and drinks at a decent price.

本当に素晴らしいです!　I was recommended this place by the staff at a ryokan nearby where I was staying. We were 3 friends and all of us enjoyed everything we ordered (Even my brother who is super picky). I don't remember the names of all the dishes I ordered since we ordered a lot. The grilled fish and fried gyoza was simply amazing. Everything I had was delicious! とても美味しい! The atmosphere was great and the staff was really helpful and spoke english too. We hadn't booked beforehand, but got a table by luck. I would recommend booking in advance, especially if you're a group a people, so you don't miss out!

Get the mushrooms wrapped in foil. I think about them every day. This place was so delicious and we enjoyed our experience thoroughly.