Meat ── Brand pork
Kyoto Poku
Kyoto's own three-way cross, graded at the city market
A Landrace × Large Yorkshire sow crossed with a Duroc boar, fed barley and bread crumbs for 60-plus days. Only pigs graded at Kyoto's central wholesale market may carry the name.
- Origin: Kyoto
- About 370 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A Landrace × Large Yorkshire cross bred with Duroc, said to carry a nutty note from barley in its fat. Only pigs cleared through market grading may use the name, said to keep quality consistent across the brand, with fine-grained lean meat and steady color, and a clean white fat noted as part of the look.
How it's made
A Landrace × Large Yorkshire sow crossed with a Duroc boar, fed barley and bread crumbs for 60-plus days. Only pigs graded at Kyoto's central wholesale market may carry the name Kyoto Poku, a brand defined by both a feed formula and a downstream grading step, with the grading standard said to be checked strictly by market staff each time.
Why it took this shape
Kyoto is said to be a city where a discerning eye for food has long been sharpened around its markets. Making passage through third-party grading at the wholesale market a condition — not just the feed formula — reads as building that market culture directly into the brand's quality guarantee, the same exacting eye once trained on Kyoto cuisine now turned toward pork.
Before you go
Dishes in the same style
- AitonA breeding line improved by Aichi Prefecture from three strains of stock pig. Several of the prefecture's local brand porks, including Mikawa Pork, are said to be built on this base.
- Awa BitonRaised in the mountains of Awa City, Tokushima, at about 400 meters, on a feed centered on rice. Handlers are said to adjust the feed mix daily and avoid genetically modified crops where possible.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Related lineage
- Hayama Kogen ButaTraces to a breeding farm the prefecture's former economic federation built at the foot of Mt. Hayama, straddling Kawamata and Nihonmatsu. A Landrace-Yorkshire-Duroc cross, fed to keep the pork odor down.
- Yonezawa Buta Ichiban SodachiA three-way cross — Landrace crossed with Large Yorkshire, then Duroc — raised in the Okitama basin's wide seasonal temperature swings on mineral-rich mountain snowmelt water.
Also from Kyoto
- Chirimen SanshoChirimen-jako simmered sweet-salty with fresh sansho peppercorns in sake, soy sauce, and mirin — a Kyoto side dish said to have begun as a cook's gift in the mid-Showa era. The peppercorns leave a sharp, fragrant aftertaste.
- Ebiimo to Bodara no TaitanEbi-imo, a striped Kyoto heirloom taro named for its shrimp-like ridges, simmers together with bodara, cod dried in Hokkaido. Gelatin from the dried cod is said to keep the taro from falling apart, while the taro's bitterness softens the cod — a textbook 'deaimon' pairing.
- Fushimi no SakeSake from Fushimi in Kyoto, a district fed by groundwater from the Momoyama plateau. Its water is said to be softer than Nada's, giving a round mouthfeel and gentle, full sweetness that overlaps with the profile recognized under the GI Kyoto geographical indication.
- GanmodokiTofu mixed with vegetables, rolled into balls, and fried. Known in Kyoto as hirousu or hiryōzu, thought to have taken this form through the vegetarian temple-cooking idea of a filling dish made without meat.
- Hamo no YakimonoPike conger, riddled with fine bones, is scored with the skilled honekiri cut and then grilled — teriyaki-glazed or salted — in Kyoto cuisine. Said to have taken root in landlocked Kyoto because the hardy fish could be carried in alive, it is also a festival food for Gion Matsuri, nicknamed the 'hamo festival.'
- Kamonasu DengakuKamonasu, a round Kyoto heirloom eggplant over 10cm across sometimes called the 'queen of eggplants,' is sliced and pan-fried in plenty of oil, then topped with a sweet miso reduced with sake and mirin. It is said to have long been grown on the alluvial fan of Kamigamo.