In Kyoto’s café scene, only a few cafes truly stand out for their unique culinary experience and atmosphere, ‘Ronmador’ instagram.com/ronmador is one of those cafes. Opened in November 2023, Ronmador is a new café managed by Okuda Masaaki-san, the owner and chef of Barmane. Barmane was once a beloved café renowned for its exquisite menu, but sadly closed its doors due to COVID.  Nevertheless, working diligently behind the scenes, Okuda-san devised a new concept — ‘special doughnuts’ — leading to the opening of Ronmador.

The name Ronmador is a combination of  ron(d) which means Round in French, Ma which are the first two letters of the chef’s first name as well as part of Bar”ma”ne and dor which means gold in French, together the name was chosen with the hope that the ‘golden circle’ centered around the MA which focusses on taste, would continue to expand and offer more appetizing and delicious food in the future.

The cafe sits in the same space where Barmane used to be, on the groundfloor of a small apartment building next to a post office on a 7 minute walk from Hankyu Kyoto Line – Karasuma Station. It’s façade features a simple yet elegant wooden door and muntin frame window with the menu and logo drawn on the glass part of the window. Inside you will find a small cafe space with a mainly white theme and rustic style interior combined with dark-wood furniture giving it a cozy atmosphere. Seating is limited with a small table for three on the left and a larger table for three on the right. In the back is the kitchen with the menu and a sample of the delicious donuts in glass jars on display.

The menu features mainly three types of special savory donuts with each unique toppings. The three types of donuts are old fashioned donuts and natural yeast donuts made with ancient wheat and old fashioned donuts made with rice flour. The old fashioned ancient wheat donuts come with ‘tomato, turnip and hummus salad’, ‘blood orange raw chocolate and soy milk cream’ or ‘plain (spices). The ancient wheat natural yeast type comes with ‘vegetable croquet’, ‘sweet potato rice cream’ or plain (brown sugar) and the old fashion rice flour donuts come with ‘smoked fish salad’, ‘crab and soymilk gratin’ or ‘plain (with celery salt)’. Besides donuts there is also fish n chips, delicious vegetable soup, dumplings, seasonal salad and more. Everything for eating in or to go.

Ronmador is run by a friendly owner and staff, is conveniently located near the station and is a must-visit cafe that offers a great culinary experience in a rustic setting.