Yudofu in Kyoto: what simmered tofu is, how to order it, what to avoid

Overview

Yudofu is the most disarming dish a famous food city can claim: blocks of soft tofu, warmed through in a pot of barely simmering water, lifted out and dipped in sauce. There is no stock to reduce, no browning, no seasoning cooked in. Everything the dish has, the tofu already had, which is exactly why it belongs here rather than anywhere else in the country.

Kyoto’s case rests on two things that are genuinely local. The first is the tofu. The city sits on soft groundwater, low in minerals, and soft water makes a cleaner, less bitter tofu — a real chemical difference, not a marketing line. The second is the temples. Tofu is a pillar of shojin ryori, the Buddhist vegetarian cooking practised in Kyoto’s monasteries, and a plain protein you could prepare without killing anything, without strong flavour and without fuss, suited that discipline precisely. The dish grew up in the restaurants that clustered outside the big Zen complexes to feed pilgrims and visitors, and it is still concentrated there: the lanes below Nanzen-ji in the east, and out west in Arashiyama.

What arrives is a small clay or metal pot at the table, water kept just under the boil with a strip of kelp resting on the bottom, and two or three blocks of tofu heating in it. You fish a block out with a slotted spoon, dip it in a warm soy-based sauce or a citrus ponzu, and top it from a tray of condiments. That is the whole meal, or the centre of one. Its plainness is the point, not a shortcoming: a dish this bare is a direct test of one ingredient, and Kyoto is showing you its tofu.

What to order

The word to know first is the tofu itself. Silken tofu — kinu — is the one you want in yudofu: custard-soft, set without pressing, so tender it barely holds a cube. Firm tofu, momen (“cotton”), is pressed and denser and belongs in other dishes; a yudofu made with it has missed the point. Good places use kinu and often make it that morning.

Most restaurants sell the dish as a set — a yudofu zen — rather than a lone pot, and the set is where the local specialities gather:

• The pot itself, tofu in kelp water, with a tray of yakumi: chopped spring onion, grated ginger, grated white radish, dried bonito flakes, sometimes a twist of citrus peel. You dress each block as you eat it, so no two mouthfuls are identical.
• Yuba — the thin skin that forms on soymilk as it heats, lifted off in delicate sheets. It is a Kyoto obsession in its own right and frequently shares the set. Fresh, it is silky and faintly sweet; dried and reconstituted, it is chewier.
• Dengaku — a slab of firmer tofu skewered and grilled, glazed with a sweet-savoury miso. It gives the meal its one caramelised, assertive note against all that mildness.
• Tempura, rice and pickles to fill the set out, usually vegetable tempura in keeping with the dish’s meat-free lineage.

The sauce is worth attention. A restaurant that hands you a small jug of warm, lightly seasoned soy with a little of the kelp broth in it is treating the dish seriously; a citrus ponzu is the other honest option, sharper and good in cold weather. What you do not want is to be drowning delicate tofu in a thick, dark, sugary sauce — that is a heavier dish wearing this one’s name.

What to avoid

The failure specific to yudofu is not a bad kitchen so much as a boiled one. Tofu must be heated, never actually boiled. Held at a rolling boil, silken tofu turns porous and rubbery — the Japanese word is su ga tatsu, “holes forming” — and goes from custard to sponge. A pot brought to your table already churning hard, or one you are told to crank the flame under, is set up to ruin the thing you came for. The water should shiver, not roll.

The second problem is the setting. Nanzen-ji and Arashiyama are two of the most visited places in the city, and a plain, photogenic, easily explained dish in a beautiful garden is exactly what a tourist-facing operation is built around. The tells here are specific: a picture menu of the set propped by the door, staff calling in passers-by from the lane, an identical fixed course in four languages at a price the garden and not the tofu is setting. The dish is cheap to make and the view is what you are being charged for; when the two come uncoupled — a lot of money, a mediocre block of tofu — that is the trade you have taken.

Finally, do not confuse yudofu with its fried relatives. Agedashi tofu is battered and deep-fried in a dashi sauce; it is very good and it is not this dish. If what lands is crisp, it is something else on the menu.

Practicalities

Yudofu is cold-weather food. It exists to warm you, and its natural season is autumn through early spring — which happens to be when the temple gardens around Nanzen-ji are at their best, so the dish and its setting peak together. Some of the specialist restaurants keep shorter hours or a reduced menu in high summer; you can find yudofu year-round, but you are eating a winter dish out of season.

A set at one of the established temple-side restaurants runs roughly ¥3,000 to ¥6,000 — call it a proper sit-down lunch or a modest dinner, with the higher end buying the garden and the room as much as the food. A simpler bowl away from the temples, or as one dish among many at an obanzai counter, is a good deal less. A very low price beside Nanzen-ji usually means firm supermarket tofu and a big group menu; a very high one means you are paying the view a second time.

It is most often eaten as a leisurely lunch rather than a quick bite — the pot wants sitting over, and the good rooms are calmest just after they open, before the mid-morning temple crowds break for food. Booking is sensible for the well-known Nanzen-ji houses in autumn, and, as with the smaller places in Gion, easiest arranged through your accommodation. Away from the temples it is casual and walk-in.