THE SODOH HIGASHIYAMA KYOTO

The building at the foot of Higashiyama has carried considerable cultural weight long before any restaurant opened inside it. The former private residence of Takeuchi Seiho, among the more influential Japanese-style painters of the Meiji and Taisho periods, the property brings a layer of historical specificity that most Kyoto dining rooms can only gesture toward. For years, the venue operated as THE SODOH HIGASHIYAMA KYOTO, formerly known as THE GARDEN ORIENTAL KYOTO, serving Italian cuisine that leaned heavily on Kyoto's seasonal produce. The formula worked: a Western kitchen format filtered through local ingredients and the quieter aesthetic of a traditional Kyoto machiya compound.

That chapter closes in 2025. As of September 2025, the site relaunches as Washoku KURO KYOTO, a high-end Japanese restaurant conceived as a Kyoto extension of Kurogi, the Tokyo washoku restaurant that has built a reputation for precise, guest-focused dining. The transplant is deliberate rather than incidental, the stated aim is to carry Kurogi's approach to refined Japanese cooking directly into a Kyoto context, with seasonal ingredients and an omakase-oriented sensibility described as attentive to individual guests to an unusual degree. The location places the restaurant within walking distance of Yasaka Shrine and the stone-paved lanes of Ninen-zaka, a stretch of Higashiyama that remains one of Kyoto's most intact historic corridors.

Private rooms are available, and the property operates as a no-smoking venue. The combination of the Takeuchi Seiho provenance, the architectural character of the residence, and the Kurogi connection positions KURO KYOTO as one of the more structurally coherent openings in Kyoto's washoku calendar for 2025.