DRINK > Wine Bar Origin, Gion Kyoto (16/20)

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Walk south from the vermilion gate of Yasaka Shrine along Shimogawara-dori and you will almost certainly walk straight past it. Origin, or Gion Shimogawara Origin to give it its full name, sits at the end of a very narrow alley that looks like it leads to someone’s front door, and in a sense it does. This is a wine bar inside a former family home, run by a man who grew up a few streets away, where the wine is chosen to stand up to freshly fried kushiage and the evening moves at whatever pace you set. It is one of those rare Kyoto addresses that feels like it belongs to the neighbourhood first and to visitors second.

AMBIENCE >

The building is a machiya, the old Kyoto townhouse, and it keeps the relaxed, lived-in calm of a home rather than the polish of a hotel bar. The heart of the room is the counter, eight seats facing the owner as he works, with two table seats beside it. Ten seats in all, which means you are never far from the fryer or the conversation. It is a warm room that never puts you far away from the owner, who serves fine wine with perfectly polished and appropriate glassware, he clears the plates and he also cooks with passion and gusto.

The details reward attention. The plates and bowls are by independent ceramic artists, and part of the pleasure is watching what each new dish arrives on. The crowd leans local; this is a counter where Kyoto residents come to unwind, and you are welcome to join them. The whole place is non-smoking.

SNACK >

“Snack” undersells it. Origin’s kitchen is built around kushiage, skewers fried to order in rice oil, which gives a lighter, cleaner crunch than the heavier frying you might expect. The skewers come one at a time, straight from the oil: prawn, chicken wings, pork loin and seasonal vegetables and fish, to be eaten as they are or with Worcestershire sauce or curry salt.

Around the skewers runs a short list of dishes that lean west and are designed with wine in mind: carpaccio, marinated plates, pâté en croûte, crab-cream croquettes and a wagyu cutlet. Those who want to hand over control can order one of the two set courses, which finish, charmingly, with hayashi rice cooked in a clay pot; otherwise you can graze à la carte or start with a five-skewer chef’s selection.

On our evening we started with a delicious selection of olives, proceeded to a fresh garden salad and then a wagu sando (wow that was delicious) and finishing up with a beef ragu pasta (all shared). This was perfectly complemented by a fine bottle of Burgundy.

DRINK >

The wine list is the reason this is filed under DRINK. It is deliberately compact, with the bottles chosen to have the body and freshness to cut through fried food rather than to impress with labels. France and Italy feature, and the bar appears on Raisin, the natural-wine app, as a venue pouring natural wines alongside local, seasonal food. The approach is conversational: tell the owner what you like, and the next glass follows from there. There has also been craft beer for those who want something cold first.

We drank a Santanay 1er Cru from Domaine Elodie Roy “Le Gravieres” (2022) which was delightful with the food and at quite a reasonable price.

CONCLUSION >

Origin is the kind of place you hope to find in Kyoto and rarely do on your own: a tiny, personal counter down a hidden unmarked lane, a few minutes from some of the city’s busiest sightseeing streets yet a world away from them. The food is built around frying to order, the wine is chosen with real thought about what it is drinking alongside, and the hospitality has the easy warmth of someone cooking in a house where he once spent evenings with childhood friends. With only ten seats, book ahead, arrive hungry and let the evening unfold.

Origin opened in February 2020, just before the pandemic emptied Kyoto’s streets, a difficult moment to launch a ten-seat counter in one of the city’s most tourist-dependent districts. That it is still going more than six years on says a good deal.

The owner, Junya Tai, was born and raised in Higashiyama. Before Origin he cooked in French and Italian kitchens, which explains the European accent of the dishes and the instinct for wine, and he brought those skills home to a very Kyoto format. The building itself has a personal history: it was the house of a childhood friend, a place where he and his friends often gathered, and Tai renovated it into the restaurant. Kushiage is often associated with Osaka’s casual skewer bars; here it has been reworked through a European lens and paired with wine, in a room that still feels like the friend’s house it once was.

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