Monk

Today, I had the pleasure of experiencing Chef Imai’s delicious creations. I was truly astonished, the food exceeded my expectation. I have watched the Netflix show featuring Chef Imai a while back. I have never expected that I would actually get a chance to taste his food and visit Monk. But somehow I did, and I am very grateful for this experience. The way I would describe it is that it felt more like embarking into a mesmerising journey, I got to experience new flavours and watch Chef Imai in action which was truly inspiring. You could tell from the live cooking that he had put his passion into each dish and presented it to us with so much love. It felt like he appreciated us tasting his dishes as much as we appreciated him cooking us the dishes. And the dishes were absolutely divine. I don’t want to say that his pizza dish was the best I have ever tasted because honestly I wouldn’t even dare compare it to any pizza I have ever tried. It’s different in the best possible way. Everything from the crust to the flavours, perfection. It was perfectly balanced in terms of crunch and chewiness. I don’t know how he does it, but no pizza will ever taste the same for me. Every dish that was served was perfectly made, it really builds up your excitement to the finale “the pizza” and it never disappoints. Thank you Chef and the team for such a lovely experience, I can’t wait to be back. I brought my family with me and they also loved the experience, my daughter whose 5 never eats more than 1 slice of pizza, and she had at least 5 today! By the time we left, she told me she wants now to be a Chef! That is amazing!

I know it’s easy to just think this is all some sort of Netflix hype. Let me tell simply tell you, it is not. From the moment you walk in you can tell this will be an amazing experience. Chef Imai is extremely talented in his craft & super humble. If you get the chance to reserve, you won’t regret it!

It was incredibly difficult to book at Monk, probably because of Netflix. My wife saw the show and wanted to try when we came to Kyoto for vacation. She had to go to Reddit for tips as we struck out the first couple times we tried to book.

We arrived early and they were able to accommodate. Some reviews mentioned that everybody's a tourist. It's true, but I don't think it took away from the experience.

We loved the service. Everybody was very friendly and attentive. The chef himself was bringing dishes out, explaining dishes and then cleaning up after.

Having a counter seat was a great experience, I would definitely recommend trying to get that if you go. You can see the care that the chef and his team put into the dishes.

The dishes were definitely creative and some dishes tasted better than others. Everything was cooked in a wood oven. I especially enjoyed the roast Hokkaido lamb. The pizza crust was one of the best I've had. The shirasu pizza was an interesting idea, but the tiny fish and soya sauce tasted a bit odd on a pizza. The shitake pizza was very good though. The dessert was a yogurt with sudachi shaved ice and osmanthus, also very tasty.