Kunihisa: For Gourmet Tempura

Tempura can be quite an extravagant affair in Japan. Many restaurants specializing in tempura are high-end, so it's not often I go. For special occasions though it is a nice change from the regular fare. Most restaurants such as this have counter seating so that the chef can fry the tempura and place it in front of you, one by one, explaining what is concealed underneath the batter. Because of this, the whole meal may take a couple hours which is why it's nice when you want to prolong the evening and spend time with someone special, or impress a client.

Because tempura is essentially just an ingredient that is battered and fried, at a place like this, the ingredients must be carefully selected. At this restaurant, they definitely were, and the chef was sure to use rare ones and interesting combinations.

The first two dishes, or appetizers, looked like this;

And now the mains, the first tempura was kuruma ebi, a type of shrimp that is considered a delicacy. It is very plump and sweet. The first thing I noticed was that the tempura here had a considerable sesame oil flavour.

Shrimp tempura

Usually gobo (burdock root) is much skinnier than this. It was a specially selected variety that had a good texture and sweetness perfect for tempura.

Burdock root tempura

Next was a type of whole onion. It was so soft and sweet, and just melted in my mouth.

Onion tempura

The palate cleansers, tsukemono (Japanese pickles), and raw namako (sea cucumber). I'm not sure what the orange coloured slices were but it was almost like cheese. The namako was very fresh and had a wonderful crunchiness to it.

Sea cucumber

I love spring rolls so there was no going wrong with this dish. It was filled with tara shirako (testicles of cod fish), which was so fresh with no fishy flavours, and was cooked perfectly, retaining the characteristic creaminess of it (cooked too much it will become hard),

Shirako spring roll

This was a first for me, Bora no heso, literally meaning belly button of the bora fish, but it is not actually the belly button. It is called that because it has the crunchy texture that chicken sunagimo (gizzard) has.

Bora no heso

There's still more:

Mochi and mentaiko wrapped in seaweed

Shirako, again creamy

Fish tempura

To end the meal was a half-cooked egg tempura on rice, a take on tamago kake gohan (raw egg on rice) and miso soup. By this time I was so full, so the egg tempura seemed a bit too oily and heavy for me, but I'm sure it would have been more tasty had I not been so stuffed! 

Egg tempura and miso soup

Normally, I usually associate tempura with dipping it in a tentsuyu, or sweet and savory soy sauce and dashi based sauce but here the chef mostly recommended using just course salt (even though tentsuyu was provided). I suppose he wanted the ingredients to be able to stand alone without much added to it, and many of the dishes did do just that. 

I believe the only menu available is the chef's omakase or chef's choice course meal (8000 yen). The ingredients he uses change daily depending on the season and freshness. It is a small restaurant with a nice atmosphere great for couples celebrating a special anniversary or for catching up with an old friend.

Area: about 260m south of Kamejima Station (Higashiyama Line) 亀島駅（東山線）
Restaurant: Tempura Kunihisa 天婦羅・國久
Map and Info: https://tabelog.com/aichi/A2301/A230113/23058220/
Hours: 5:30-11pm (LO 10:30pm), closed Wednesdays