“Would you like me to cut them in half?” came a quiet voice from behind the sushi counter as I was halfway through my omakase dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Kyoto. It was the first non-airplane food I’d eaten in more than 24 hours—and one of the best sushi meals of my life—and I wanted to savor every morsel.
And clueless American that I am (pretty much every American is ultimately clueless about the intricate workings of Japanese culture), I had been proud of myself for reading up enough to know that adding wasabi or dipping in soy sauce was wrong, and that eating sushi with your fingers is appropriate (and fun), but I hadn’t gotten to the part about devouring each treasure in one bite.
It was at that moment that I fell for the Ritz-Carlton Kyoto. (Though the Bluefin tuna certainly helped, and then there was that otherworldly uni sushi that I'm still fantasizing about.) In her solicitous question, there was a gentle schooling in the Japanese way but also a tolerance for oafish foreigners and a Ritz-Carlton attitude that the guest is always right. I got the elegant hint, finished my meal with proper etiquette and was pleased to have learned something. If she’d kept her mouth shut, I would have missed out. (I recently stayed as a guest of the hotel.)
Also, Ritz-Carlton earns major bonus points for hiring one of very few female sushi chefs in the upper echelon of Japanese restaurants. During the hotel’s pre-opening, the management team found Chisaki Iba behind the sushi counter at a local restaurant, noticed her skills, command of English and general friendliness, and snapped her up for the hotel.
That same idea of teaching without preaching, of offering real insight into the traditions of Japan’s cultural capital without feeling at all uncomfortable to Westerners on vacation, permeates the hotel, which opened as Kyoto’s only Western high-luxury hotel in 2014. The 134 rooms and suites are modeled on traditional Meiji-era houses, with bonsai trees on the windowsills and orchids on tables. They’re also the largest in Kyoto (averaging about 500 square feet) with lavish bathrooms and dressing areas. Mine had the biggest hotel bed I’ve ever seen.
Overall, the hotel is a traditional ryokan writ large. The latticed geometry of the room dividers, and especially the shadows they cast, are stunning. Areas that would be social hubs in any other city feel like hushed enclaves for reading or contemplation, or maybe close confiding in a friend. (The spa downstairs isn’t overwhelmingly Japanese—it uses products and protocols from the highly regarded UK line ESPA—but it’s another peaceful retreat on the premises.)
And as the first Western-style luxury hotel in the city, the Ritz-Carlton didn’t just meet expectations but set some new ones. A number of people I met in Kyoto told me the city is suffering from a hotel shortage, and the international players are working on fixing that. A Four Seasons opened this month, and a Park Hyatt and an Aman are said to be in the works. They’ll all be great once their training wheels come off, but for now, the Ritz-Carlton is still the best luxury game in town. (It also has a prime location, overlooking the Kamogawa River, in an area favored by nobility that's near good transit options in the city center.)
Helping it keep that status are the two excellent restaurants. The Italian restaurant, La Locanda, imports high-quality ingredients and puts them to use in traditional Italian cooking. The Western-style breakfast served there is especially impressive (and appreciated by anyone who generally wants to go native but then spends a few days in Japan and decides that pungent pickled vegetables and bony river fish at 7am are a bit much). Until recently, there was a morning buffet, but the management team had the smart idea of deconstructing it. Once you order eggs—from a nearby farm and so fresh that their yolks are orange—you sit back as servers roll over a cart laden with fresh fruit, berries, yogurt and muesli; carry large boxes with a dozen homemade breads and pastries; proffer trays of meat and cheese; and offer green salads with three types of dressing.
There’s no shame in playing it safe for breakfast. But a big reason to visit Japan is the food, and the Japanese restaurant, Mizuki, is an excellent introduction to the cuisine. There are dedicated areas for sushi, tempura, teppanyaki and kaiseki, the traditional Japanese haute cuisine. My kaiseki dinner was undeniably impressive—especially the sashimi presented on an ice sculpture, paired with a newly trendy sparkling sake from the area—but it’s memories of my first jet-lagged sushi dinner that I’ll take with me.
Once Chisaki educated me in the proper way to eat sushi, I let down my guard and enjoyed the fish feast that followed. And after I signed my check, she slipped me her card—on which she’d drawn an endearingly cartoonish self-portrait and written “lady sushi chef” with a few hearts. I'm holding onto it.
