Kyoto's cinnamon-and-rice sweet, sold both baked-crisp and raw as soft nama-yatsuhashi filled with red-bean paste; in Japan we have verified places to eat it in Kyoto. Start with where to eat Yatsuhashi in Kyoto.
Yatsuhashi · Kyoto
Kyoto's cinnamon-and-rice sweet, sold both baked-crisp and raw as soft nama-yatsuhashi filled with red-bean paste. The city's most-photographed souvenir.
Yatsuhashi takes its name from a 17th-century Kyoto composer of the koto, Yatsuhashi Kengyo. The original baked-crisp form dates to the 1680s in Higashiyama. The soft, cinnamon-dusted nama-yatsuhashi filled with sweet azuki paste is the 20th-century evolution, codified by Honke Nishio and Otabe in the 1960s. Today every souvenir tier of Kyoto Station Porta basement is stacked with yatsuhashi boxes in cinnamon, matcha, sakura and yuzu variants.
Where to eat in Kyoto:
- JR Kyoto Isetan Depachika
- Daimaru Kyoto Depachika
- Porta Underground Shopping
Where to eat Yatsuhashi in Kyoto: the editor picks