Tenpachi only gives out half-size business cards, so I’ll keep this brief.
So I had lunch with Gita, who doesn’t eat animals (fish are OK) and we went to Kitchen Street in Tokyo Station. Something about that place makes me eat fried food; I would have been tempted by the beef-focused places if not for the company. And out of the two places with ‘fry’, one was a soba specialist whose kakiage looked quite tempting, and the other was pushing out the door delightful waves of frying sesame oil smell, so they won.
Tenpachi is pretty basic, which is the main reason I’ll keep this short. It’s ‘Edomae Tendon’, meaning they specialize in tempura-on-rice bowls featuring produce from the greater Tokyo area (in theory). In practice, the food is exactly what you’d expect from tempura. The tendon looked pretty good (especially after Gita went nuts choosing exactly what he wanted, and seemed to end up with a better bowl as a result!), but I had the extra-ebi teishoku. Three shrimps, eggplant, peppers…basics. Bowl of rice, bowl of grated daikon for the dipping sauce. Only thing I can really comment on is the fry itself.
They had nice frying hoods going behind the counter, and the food was definitely served asap, so the hotness, freshness and crunchiness was all there. The batter was somehow thicker than expected, and cooked up in a nice meaty way. The shrimps were a little mealy to me; maybe that’s because they were caught in Chiba Bay or something? Anyway, nothing much to recommend this one way or the other except the lovely sesame oil smell!
While I do so hate to be crass, the tendon are Y1050, and the extra-ebi was Y1180. I left unfulfilled on a quantity basis.
More foooooood!
03-3283-3477
I prefer vegetable tempura…