Originally Posted by
yana11
Just wondering, is it really worth visiting such a posh restaurant? I've never happened to dine at a Michelin restaurant, so can anybody share your experience of that?
Sure. And Michelin doesn't automatically equate to fancy or pretentious (though there are certainly many fancy and pretentious starred restaurants).
Whether you'd eat at starred restaurants, particularly 2- and 3-starred ones, on an everyday basis is of course not likely, but many people do try to incorporate Michelin dining into their travels.
Originally Posted by
bhrubin
As of now, we have the following booked for us for our 7 nights in Kyoto:
[...]
Nakamura (3*) dinner
[...]
I can’t quite bring myself to include French or Italian while traveling in Japan. We’d rather largely stick to Japanese cuisine as much as possible.
We ate at Nakamura a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. The level of attention (yet unobtrusive attention) given to us as diners was fantastic; we had a private dining room with multiple servers who delivered each dish, explained it, then departed. I believe the local tilefish is their specialty ingredient and features in several of their dishes, particularly a filet from which you're told not to eat the skin/scales (not that scales are good eats), as they then use it and the bones in the broth made for the next course. A white miso soup is their other specialty IIRC.
And I agree entirely on the notion of sticking to local cuisine where possible. That's not to say there isn't fantastic French food in Japan or Italian food in Greece, for example, but I always am inclined to go with the local or at least national/regional cuisine.