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Shovel Time: Tempura Tsunahachi

threeshovelTempura is ok. Honestly, battered, fried seafood makes me nauseous, though that’s more fish and chips and shrimp you’d have as an appetizer at a American-Chinese restaurant where you’d get ketchup with a little dot of hot mustard in a tiny saucer. But if you’re in Japan, it would be silly to ignore tempura.

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Tempura Tsunahachi treats each piece with care, only frying a few pieces at a time and setting them in front of you like precious sushi. I chose one of the set lunches (roughly $20–dinner is considerably more) where shrimp, fish, lotus root, and other vegetables, three at a time, came with rice, pickles, a mound of grated daikon, and miso soup.

I committed the faux pas of pouring soy sauce in my little dish when there was a sauce especially for dipping in the ceramic pitcher (there wasn’t one in arm’s reach at the counter and I thought it contained tea) but in Japan you’ll make mistakes constantly without even knowing it and it’s ok and kind of freeing.

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This was the other lunch choice, where the tempura came as a bowl on rice at once.

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All the miso soup I was served in Tokyo came with a surprise at the end: clams tiny as my fingernails.

Tempura Tsunahachi Japan, 〒160-0022 Tokyo, Shinjuku, 新宿3丁目31−8

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