Sweet spot

A celebrated Kyoto restaurant offers a custom-built outlet for its confections

There is a new addition to Honke Owariya, widely regarded as Kyoto’s oldest soba confectioner and restaurant. Today, it is run by 16th-generation owner Ariko Inaoka, who asked Osaka-based designer Teruhiro Yanagihara, creative director of ceramics brand 1616/Arita Japan, to transform an empty bicycle park next to the restaurant, housed in a 19th-century wooden machiya townhouse, into a dedicated sweet shop. In the new space, a wall of glass showcases a minimalist interior, the contemporary lines of a concrete block counter softened by plaster walls, walnut door frames and atmospheric lighting by New Light Pottery (see W*236). Beneath an old shop sign on the wall, wooden boxes display the confectionery for which Honke Owariya is famed, from soba rice cakes to melt-in-the-mouth soba warabi-mochi. Meanwhile, a glass side door slides open across a threshold of graphic roof tiles (found buried in the garden during renovations) onto a walled garden that flows towards the machiya entrance, connecting shop to restaurant. honke-owariya.co.jp

At the main branch of Honke Owariya, located on Niomontsukinukecho in Kyoto, a wall of glass (above) showcases the minimalist interior of its new outlet dedicated solely to soba sweets, while a side door (left) crosses a threshold of graphic tiles to lead into a walled garden