Sharing our dining experiences: Miho Museum Cafe

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Miho Museum Cafe

Miho Museum at Shiga prefecture, around 2hr drive from Kyoto, was the most serene museum I've ever visited and my favourite by far. Even to this date, everytime I see our photos, I felt so in awe.

You just felt how the people and the museum respect the nature surrounding this museum; and if you read and even watched the DVD, how Mr IM Pei met such difficulties in constructing it, you would be in awe even more with the Japanese. Mr IM Pei also said the same thing that luckily he had the opportunity to work with Japanese, they had the best workmanship, technologies and perseverance at that time to be able to construct this museum.

And it was such a vision to be able to design and built this museum as part of the hills, it was the request of Lady Mihoko, the owner who so confident only Mr IM Pei fitted the bill to design this museum. After that others requested Mr IM Pei to design similar design to Miho Museum architectural design.

This is a master example of how we, human, can still build something but in same time also pay respect to our nature, it even has a sustainable vision back in 1990. I saluted how they planted back all the trees surrounding the museum after construction. And how Lady Mihoko had envisioned that by having this museum, she would also employed the residents around it to work and make it sustainable to the museum, nature, and people around it.

So, we came to the cafe, after our return buggy ride from the Museum through that beautiful tunnel (it was built more than 20 years ago but still feel so modern), next to the Admission and Souvenir store.

And to my delight surprise and should've guessed that the cafe served only Vegetarian and all the ingredients are locally produced and planted around the museum.

I love the whole concept very much!

The nice and courteous senior lady staff could even explained in English about the concept of the cafe.

The dishes were excellent, fresh and simple but tasted exquisitely indeed.

Too bad, we were catching the only every hour bus to return to the train station so I didn't have leisure time to take more photos of the cafe.

This is the only Museum and Cafe I long to return despite the long journey...