Dinner at the Tenichi Tempura restaurant at Kyoto Station

7 June 2016

This was our second last day in Kyoto and we had another chance to have dinner at Kyoto Station. We had already tried one of the best Tonkatsu restaurants (Katsukura) in Kyoto at the Cube dining area on the 11^th floor of Kyoto Station – see previous post on the directions to get to this place and review of Katsukura.

This time round, we decided to try one of the best Tempura restaurants at the same area. Tenichi is famous for tempura in Tokyo with their flagship store in Ginza and they have a branch in Kyoto and at Kyoto Station! It was offering a set dinner at only 5,400 Yen per set which was a good deal for dining at such a high-end restaurant in Kyoto.

 

There was almost no queue when we arrived at about 7.30 PM and soon seated in front of the chef. The best drink to go with tempura is a cold beer and we sipped our cold beer while waiting for the show to begin and food to flow. Bibs were provided to protect us from any oil splashes and trays with all items needed to enjoy tempura were placed in front of us. It included the usual grated radish on ponzu sauce, pickles, pepper and a slice of lemon.

 

An assistant brought out a basket containing the raw ingredients to the chef. 

First up was the prawn. Or rather the prawn heads. 

The prawn head were crispy and made a good snack or appetiser. Absolutely no dripping oil as can be seen in the photo above. We were guided on which dips to use for the heads. Salt and pepper for the heads, with some lemon juice or just eat it plain. While enjoying our “snacks”, the chef coated the prawn with tempura batter and cooked it in boiling oil in front of us.

Freshly cooked ebi-tempura or prawn tempura. Delicious and no oily taste. 

The next items served were the fish and vegetable tempuras. Part of the fun of having tempura at Tenichi was watching the expert chef at work. Somehow, food tasted much better when it was cooked and eaten straight away. 

Vegetables tempura. Not bad cooked this way and dipped in the ponzu sauce. 

After finishing the tempura course, we were served the rice with tempura fish toppings, pickles and miso soup.

In this restaurant, the miso soup was cooked with small clams to make it tastier.

As we were leaving the restaurant, I saw a photo on the wall with photos of quite a few celebrities who had ate at the Tenichi or one of its branches in the past. Some of these were celebrities from the past era.

See if you can recognise any of these celebrities from the photos.