Food is all around in this city where one can snack on small eats in the market or feast on a kaiseki spread

Dining in Kyoto can spoil a person for life.

In the city, a greedy person can slurp thick soybean milk; enjoy wagashi, not-too-sweet desserts that are a contrast to frothy, bitter green tea; savour a leisurely kaiseki meal; and nosh like royalty from one end of Nishiki Market to the other.

I was in the former imperial capital of Japan for seven nights recently and in all that time, did not have one bad meal.

Even mitarashi dango, grilled mochi balls with a sweet-salty soy glaze, eaten hot off the grill on the street, are good.

In Kyoto, nobody has hang-ups about eating on the street; unlike in Tokyo, where shopkeepers will shoo you away if you dare to loiter around their shopfronts holding a crepe in a cone.

For the best nosh, head to Nishiki Market (below) and start at the end closest to Daimaru department store.

The minute the doors open at 6pm sharp, there is a mini stampede into Takocho, an oden restaurant that is more than a century old.

In no time at all, the dozen or so counter seats are filled. Two middle-aged men in white jackets preside over copper pots with delicious things bobbing on top.

You point at two or three items you want and they plate it up. A handful of finely chopped scallions and a dollop of mustard go on the side. When you have finished the first plate, repeat.

The stock is rich and full of umami. Order the daikon, which would have soaked up all that flavour. Meatballs are good, as is a fried tofu ball dotted with sesame seeds, with a ginkgo nut inside.

Best of all is a fat octopus tentacle (below left), cooked long enough so it is tender but has a bit of chew left in it.

Kinmata, a ryokan with a 200-year history very near Nishiki Market, is a very charming inn and restaurant (below). Here, those not so limber can have a kaiseki meal without leg cramps.

We are seated comfortably in low chairs lined with purple brocade cushions in a tatami room.

The 13,000 yen kaiseki dinner here is refined and elegant.

Silky tofu made with tai or sea bream and topped with fried ayu fish (bottom) offers beautiful contrasting textures.

There is also a mochi dumpling filled with amadai or tile fish, wrapped in a sakura leaf, sitting in broth thickened by kuzu, which is like arrowroot.

Watching chef Hideichi Katagiri prowl back and forth in his tiny galley kitchen, being gruff with his staff, is like watching a lion swat away pesky cubs.

I am eager to return to this restaurant, which serves an all-beef kaiseki menu for about 10,000 yen sans drinks.

To start, there is inner shoulder of cow, in small pieces and served cold, coated with egg yolk.

There is also a magnificent beef dumpling in broth. The skin is made of fish paste and filled with tender pieces of beef and bamboo shoots.

A play on sushi is both delicious and fun to eat (below, right): a luscious slice of raw beef stands in for fish on a piece of nigiri sushi, there is maki sushi with sweet crab and beef and a tiny bowl of chirashi topped with cubed raw beef.

One of my favourite courses is lightly chewy strips of ox tongue sashimi served with ginger and scallions.

With grilled beef (below, left), there is a rectangle of shoyu mousse. Poof! It vaporises in the mouth, leaving behind the intense flavour of Japanese soy sauce on expertly seared beef.

“How do you do it?” a customer at the nine-seat counter asks.

“Magic,” the chef says, with the hint of a smile.

It is supreme irony that one of the best meals I have in Kyoto is located round the corner from a fast food restaurant.

But yes, Kikunoi Roan, sister restaurant to chef Yoshihiro Murata’s Kikunoi Honten, is right near where a bridge cuts through Kiyamachi Dori. It is a street lined – no, crammed – with cherry blossom trees flowering madly when I visit.

Looking at the menu, which I have stuck on my office cubicle wall, makes my mouth water.

With the sashimi course in the 10,500 yen kaiseki meal comes slices of Spanish mackerel with rectangles of tart ponzu jelly. The amber slices cut the richness of the fish beautifully and is good even on its own.

A slice of barely cooked salmon comes with a spear of crispy skin perched on top and the kinome oroshi, grated daikon mixed with sansho pepper leaf, is bright, spicy and perky. I have to learn how to make this.

The leaf appears again in a course of grilled tofu, this time mixed with miso. It tops one piece, while fuki, a mountain vegetable, is mixed with miso as a topping for the other piece.

But the best course of the meal is the rice one. The cooks show diners the iron pot it is cooked in and then dish out minute helpings of rice and pieces of bamboo shoots. Their flavour permeates the rice grains and it is a pure, clean one that reminds me of walking in the woods in the morning.

I have two helpings and move on to dessert.

At the end, one of the chefs asks if I would like to take the rest with me. Of course, I say.

That night, my last in the city, I tuck into the rice after the horror of packing. It is mixed with the burnt bits from the bottom of the pot and is a bit smoky.

Oh, for another taste of that rice now.