The Tempura Grail

Way back, lost now in the mists of blog, I was on a mission to find the best tempura in San Mateo. I was thorough, nearly exhaustive, but though I had some decent examples of the dish, nothing rose to the level of the tempura of my dreams. Which was a disappointment, if not really the kind that kept me up at night. But it turns out that great tempura, like love or ants, turns up when you least expect it.

Last year a new Japanese restaurant, Izakaya Ginji, opened in downtown San Mateo. Which was a bold move, considering how many Japanese restaurants are already here, but this one did at least promise something different. Izakaya is, as far as I can tell, a small-plates style of restaurant, with an emphasis on things to be eaten with sake, beer, and/or shochu. This one features a  very large, very hot grill at the bar, where a chef prepare a variety of things, mostly chicken, on sticks, which you order from a slip of paper on your table. We had been there several times, ordering mostly the things on sticks (I cannot recommend the chicken hearts highly enough), when at one point we decided to try something more substantial, and got the tempura.

They do the vegetables and the shrimp separately, hence the two plates above. But the important thing is that they do them very, very well. Light, crisp batter, perfectly cooked ingredients, nothing that got heavy or soggy, even as they cooled. This was the tempura I was looking for, and no old guy waving his hand in my face was going to convince me otherwise.

We will go back, of course, but I may not actually order the tempura every time. It's enough just to know it's there.

One Flu Over the Tempura's Nest

That's right, once again I am depriving you fried, crispy (or perhaps soggy, depending) goodness, this time depending on the excuse of a bad head cold. Which, admittedly, is largely finished by now, aside from the constant and annoying need to depressurize my head and occasional coughing fit, but I feel that the lack of full nasal capacity would hinder my judging ability*. Also, it's really hot.**


*The fact that I ended up eating at the (well air-conditioned) Outback at the mall, splitting a steak sandwich with my roommate and getting moderately drunk on very silly beverages, should not be considered as factors in this matter.
**For here.

The Chronicles of Tempura: The Carrot, The Shrimp, and The Broccoli

Joy Sushi


Well, I forgot to take the photo again, so you're going to have to take the existence if tonight's dinner on faith. Though you might be able to guess at the nature of this review from the state of the dishes.

I had been putting off my visit to this place, because it didn't look very promising from the outside-- just another hole-in-the-wall among on the edges of the downtown. My first surprise, then was to go inside and find it large and bright, and decently crowded, unlike the last several places I've been. I took a place at the sushi bar, and found I was lucky to get it; in the time I was there a line formed that filled the entryway and I was feeling kind of bad about taking my seat between two empty ones.

Food:
When you get lines out (or at least up to) the door, I think you should be able to expect, or at least reasonably hope for, good food. And, in this case, your hopes would not be unreasonable. After last week's example of fancy signs on a lousy restaurant I had pretty much given up on expectations, and when I realized that every one of the combination bentos included tempura I wasn't very hopeful (after all, if they're just churning it out for everything, can it really be that good?), so you can imagine my surprise when my food came and it was excellent. True, I did have to pull a lump of batter off the end of the shrimp before I could even get to it and the broccoli was, as usual, hopeless, but overall I would have to say that this was some of the best tempura I have had so far. It arrived crisp and delicious, didn't become heavy or greasy even when it cooled down, came with a good, reasonably interesting selection of vegetables and didn't leave me feeling like I had just drunk the contents of a fryolater. The rest of the bento was composed of some slightly-above-average tuna sashimi and some very nice gyoza, though points off for only offering California rolls with imitation crab. (I know, everywhere does it, I just keep hoping...) And, of course, the whole experience was improved by the fact that there were a dozen or so people waiting to get in and wishing they were me, happily sitting down and eating this good food.



Tempura Grade: 8/10
Overall Grade: 8/10

Tempura Thursday: Hot Time, Tempura in the City*

*Okay, suburb.



Liquid
1750 S. El Camino Real
San Mateo, CA


It's May, and the temperatures in the Bay Area are hitting the eighties, which means it's time for people to lie on the floor and moan about how they're going to die of heatstroke. Me, I'm eating tempura.

That's right. After a break for travel (and a delay in posting because I was too lazy/otherwise occupied to write this up last week) we're back! I'm here to chew bubble gum and eat tempura, and I'm all out of bubble gum. Which is a good thing, because that would be gross.

In a slight deviation from my usual pattern, this week I took on a place outside of San Mateo's main drag, on El Camino just off the exit from 92. Also different is the fact that the restaurant is clearly trying to distinguish itself as a fancy and modern place (witness, the name) in what looks to be a reconditioned Perko's.


Food:
There was no sashimi option in the combo listings, so I had to make do with a California to go with my tempura (for the relatively high price of eighteen dollars). They brought out the usual starters fairly promptly (there was almost no one else in the restaurant): a salad which, like many of the places I have visited, they kept premade in the refrigerator, really putting the "ice" in iceberg, and possibly the worst miso soup I have had so far; much too salty, with an unidentifiably odd taste (did they make it with chicken broth or something?). I was disappointed not to get edamame, which I think is a clear sign that I am getting spoiled.

The entrees came in separate dishes, a presentation that always makes me feel like I have ordered too much food, because I have. The roll came first, and while it was nicely prepared with a welcome lack of cucumber, it was disappointingly made with imitation crab. (Helpful hint for restaurants trying to make themselves "fancy": "Fancy" restaurants do not generally replace ingredients with cheaper, fake, alternatives.) The tempura was fine, even a little crisper than usual, though that may have been due to being slightly overcooked. The selection of vegetables was unimaginative (sweet potato, eggplant, zucchini, something I'm forgetting), but they left out the bad ones, the shrimp were decently large and nothing was over-battered. But, in the same way I feel obligated to give extra points if I clean my plate, I think that if partway through eating the dish I take a bite and have to stop because I feel ill, that counts as an automatic one-point deduction.

Reviewing: It's more of an art than a science.


Tempura Grade: 5/10
Overall Grade: 4/10

Moibus Tempura

Maru Maru
213 2nd St.
San Mateo


I thought I was almost done. I had three more restaurants to try and then I was going to tie this little project up with a bow and call it a day. That was manageable. I could do that. And then, while I was looking for parking near one of them tonight, I found two more. And another one across the street. And one of them had opened within the last month. I can see my future stretching out before me, and it is deep-fried and shrimpy.

As it happened, I found a spot in front of the new restaurant, so I went there. It was definitely on the fancier side of the places I have been, very new and modern, with a lot of dark wood and brushed steel. Like most of the places I've been to lately, it was uncrowded (with four Japanese restaurants within a block, how could it be otherwise?) and an overabundance of staff stood at the ready. It got to the point that I felt bad to drink my tea, because as soon as it was about a third of the way down, the waitress would appear to refill my cup.


Food: For once, I am not going to grade primarily on tempura. Why? Because, that's why. I had a very good dinner with excellent service, and if one of the three dishes I had was only average, then I can live with that. Edamame, still warm, came out as soon as I sat down, which is always a good start. (Fun fact! At one point I thought I hated edamame. Then I tried some and realized I didn't. Apparently, it was something else I hated. Not sure what.) My combo dinner options were little different this time, with two items from column A (I chose the tempura with a beef with onions dish, the name of which escapes me (not pictured)) and one from column B (sashimi, of course). It was a little pricier than other places I've been to, but the reason for that became clear once the food started to come out. Rather than the small portions of a bento, each component was a complete dish, resulting in an amount of food that was approximately dinner for three. What's more, while I was hopelessly plowing my way through this mountain of food, who should appear but the waitress, bearing a special little dish prepared by the sushi chefs, a "new thing they were trying out." This turned out to be a jalepeno, hollowed out and filled with salmon, then baked with a creamy mustard sauce on top and sliced into sushi-sized pieces. My wimpdom when it comes to spicy food is well-documented, but taking out the innards seemed to have defused the power of the pepper, and I found the dish not only eatable, but delicious. And the sashimi was distinctly above average, and the beef dish, whatever it was, was still very good when I heated it up for lunch on Friday, and even the orange slices were extra-good. So if maybe the tempura was a little plain, and the vegetable selection somewhat starchy and uninspired then, well, maybe that isn't the be-all and end-all of restaurant judging. This time, at least.


Tempura Grade: 7/10
Overall Grade: 9/10

On The Twelfth Day of Tempura

Fuji Sukiyaki
428 E. 3rd Ave.
San Mateo, CA


I was nearly done with my dinner-- a definitely above-average offering at a mostly-empty place across the Caltrain tracks from the main part of the downtown-- when I started to get the feeling I had forgotten something. But what? I had my tempura and my sashimi. I had finished my miso soup and my somewhat kimchi-like dish of spicy pickled cabbage. So what could I have been missing? Oh, right:



So you're just going to have to take my word for it that my meal arrived as a nicely-presented plate, with three kinds of sashimi (not pictured), a salad (seen above) and a selection of tempura (mostly not pictured, except the broccoli and part of a shrimp). Also not pictured is the staff, who were very friendly and chatty, due to the fact that there weren't a whole lot of people there and they didn't have a lot to do. My dinner arrived before I had even started on my miso soup.

Food: Generally, when I go to a restaurant with a specific food item in its name, I try to try that item (in this case, sukiyaki). But, given my mission, and the lack of an appropriate combo meal, that was not an option. The mission, above all things!

Um, anyway, definitely above-average, if not mind-blowing, tempura here. As I mentioned, there were three kinds of sashimi (all, as far as I could tell, all varieties of tuna, but still), which I appreciated. The tempura batter was crisp and not too heavy, though as usual the sogginess did set in as the temperature dropped.

Somewhere out there, I just know it, somewhere there is tempura that is every bit as tasty at the end of dinner as it was when it was still burning your tongue. A girl can dream, right?

Tempura Grade: 6/10
Overall: 6/10

Temp(ura) Work

Tenka Japanese Restaurant
246 S. B St
San Mateo, CA



I think, at this point, I may have fallen victim to the malaise that seems to strike almost every reviewer after continual exposure to the thing they are reviewing. I still like tempura, I think, and anyway I have come far enough in this misguided project that I feel the need to see it through to the greasy, deep-fried end. It's just that I find the way I approach the food has changed; I can eat something that someone else might consider a perfectly adequate meal and see only the flaws, complaining about predictability and demanding possibly unreasonably high standards of excellence. It's the same thing I have been noticing lately in certain movie critics (*coughcough* Entertainment Weekly *cough*), and I wonder if this sort of thinking is simply an occupational hazard of the reviewing game. On the other hand, I always have been a judgmental bitch.

All of which is to say that I was, again, underwhelmed by the tempura at my latest stop. It wasn't appalling; as usual, when it was hot it was much better, though the fact that the first bite I took of the shrimp netted me only batter. And, as usual, as the food cooled it gradually transitioned from "tasty" to "kinda heavy" to "urgh." As far as the vegetables went, I appreciated the sweet potato and zucchini, but not the green pepper and broccoli. The sashimi wasn't bad, definitely higher quality than some I've had, but not fantastic either. Since this place had as their option for the combo meal a choice of three items from the list, I again added the gyoza, which this time came with an insidiously spicy dipping sauce.
Interestingly, this was the second week in a row that I ate at a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese people. The last one was more upfront about it, with shu mai on the menu and the very un-Japanese names of the sushi chefs on their business cards displayed on the bar. This time I only had the evidence of the TV being tuned to the local Mandarin-language station, but I consider that to be proof enough.


Tempura: 5/10
Overall: 5/10

TempuraWish X10: Hunger is the Best (Tempura Dipping) Sauce

Ni-Mo Japanese Cuisine
73 E. 3rd Ave.
San Mateo


Like any good researcher, I try to be as objective consistent as possible in my collection of data. But sometimes external factors do interfere. Like yesterday, for example. At lunchtime I went down to the cafeteria for my diet-compatible cup of soup, only to find that they were nearly out of the tomato-basil, the most edible option. There was almost, but not quite, enough to make a small serving, which I complemented with some Sun Chips from the vending machine, but it was still a somewhat light lunch. Then I went to the gym in the afternoon and ran four miles on the treadmill, which was all very good for me, but it did mean that by the time I took my seat at the sushi bar in my tenth Japanese restaurant so far, I was absolutely famished. Which I realize may have an influence on my response to the

Food: They got off to a good start by bringing out a dish of edamame, which is never a bad thing. The combo options were a little different here; with the closest to my usual including gyoza and california roll along with the tempura and sashimi. I didn't mind that, though the crab in the cali roll was blatantly fake. Like I said, I was very hungry. Which is why the evaluation of the rest of the meal gets a little tricky. So, yes, I did eat all of the tempura, aside from the broccoli and the last bit of the shrimp, and I did appreciate the vegetable variety (particularly the eggplant and yam). But on the other hand, the last couple of bites (when I was no longer hungry and the tempura was no longer hot) were nearly inedible and I left the restaurant with a feeling like I had consumed a large, deep-fried rock. Also, the sashimi was some of the lowest-quality I have had so far. So, while it looks like the grades I'm giving here are pretty straightforward, some complicated figuring has gone into them (points on for edamame and gyoza, points off for bad sashimi, points on for me eating the whole thing, off for maybe it wasn't really that good, etc.).

Tempura Grade: 5/10
Overall Grade: 5/10

Return to Tempura Island

I realize I allowed my tempura-based obligations to lapse last week; it happened to be a week when life decided to punch me in the face a couple of times, and I thought it might have affected my taste buds. Also, I didn't feel like it.

Hotaru Japanese Restaurant
33 E 3rd Ave
San Mateo


I keep thinking I've covered all of the restaurants on a particular block, and then I will drive by and notice one or two more that I missed. So it is with the first block of Third Street, and this place, plus at least one more. I'm not sure how I missed it-- it's not particularly inconspicuous. A friendly, smallish restaurant, with a good crowd for a Wednesday by the time I was done eating.

Food: The good news: reasonable prices (16.95 for the tempura/sashimi combo), the option of choosing your fish for the sashimi (I went with the salmon), large servings. The bad news: average, overbattered tempura, poor vegetable selection (two pieces each of green pepper and broccoli), severe sogginess when it got cold. Not appallingly bad, and the sashimi was quite good, but the sort of tempura that makes you wonder why some restaurants bother to serve the dish at all.


Tempura Grade: 3/10
Overall Grade: 4/10

Tempura Thursday IIX: Back to San Mateo

Restaurant Mutsu
279 Baldwin Ave.
San Mateo, CA

Tonight my primary criterion for choosing a restaurant was parking. It was starting to rain and, being me, I hadn't bothered to wear any sort of jacket, so I wasn't about to take a spot three blocks away from where I was going. Which meant the main drag downtown was out, so I ended up wandering a little farther afield. The restaurant was on the corner of a relatively quiet street, and it wasn't exactly crowded, but I didn't necessarily consider that a bad sign. The decor was midcentury-family room, with fake wood panelling, formica tables, well-worn chairs upholstered in floral plastic. Hipster bars spend thousands trying to achieve this level of authenticity.

Food: So I wanted to like this place; it was exactly what you would expect your secret special find of a great hidden restaurant to be. But things started looking down when the food started coming, beginning with the pickles, which were more like chunks of cucumber in vinegar dressing, and continuing with the uninspiring soup. So by the time my dinner arrived my expectations had been readjusted, in a more realistic direction, as it happened.

First, the good news. The selection of vegetables in the tempura was large and varied and the lychee sorbet they had for dessert was delicious. The tempura itself, unfortunately, not so much. As usual, it wasn't bad at first, but it was heavy and greasy (the napkin they put down under it was entirely soaked in oil by the end of the meal) and became nearly inedible when it got cold. Also, the batter kept coming loose from the pieces, and you really should pull the strings from green beans before you serve them. So the place wasn't exactly a winner, which was why I was surprised to overhear one of the other people there say that they come here all the way from San Ramon (!) for the sushi. So I'll give it the benefit of the doubt on that, though I will say that the sashimi they served me was unexceptional. (I wonder if ordering a tempura/sashimi combo marks you out as someone who doesn't know their stuff, and therefore gets you the lesser pieces of fish.)

A pity, really; it would have been nice to find a good place with parking.

Tempura: 4/10
Overall: 4/10

Friday Bonus Tempura

Sugata Japanese Restaurant
1105 Solano Ave.
Albany, CA


As you may have noticed, this week's tempura tasting is taking place outside of my usual range. As it happens, this week was rather busy, and before I knew it, it was Friday (today). And since I had an appointment to get my hair cut today in Berkeley (hey, a good stylist is hard to find), I met my parents for dinner at the Japanese restaurant we used to go to a lot when I was a kid. It's a tiny place and we had to wait about ten minutes for a table, but the people were friendly, if somewhat disorganized.

Food: Tonight was somewhat different than usual, since I was eating somewhere I had been before and I wasn't dining alone. The latter part was a definite improvement, as I could give the pieces I didn't want to my dad and because we could also order some sushi to start. We had the "special California roll", made with real crab (I asked) and topped with tobiko, which all by itself added a point to the overall score. (Mainly for the crab. It's hard to find real crab in sushi, and I don't see any point in eating the fake stuff.)
The first difference, the one about having been there before, actually made the judging a little harder. I knew as soon as I took a bite of the tempura (combo with tekka sashimi, 19.95) that this was the tempura of my memory, and I had trouble getting away from that to judge the dish objectively. Ultimately, I thought it was fairly good, crisp batter, good selection of vegetables, generous amount of shrimp, but hampered by overbattering and ultimately a little bit heavy. The sashimi was also fine, if not spectacular (incidentally, this was the restaurant where I first tried raw fish, in the form of tekka sashimi when I was twelve or thirteen).

There's another restaurant, way down San Pablo Ave. in El Cerrito, where my family used to go when I was even younger, and where I believe I did most of my early tempura-eating (according to my mom, who would know, what I primarily had in Japan was tonkatsu). I'll try and get over there at some point and see how that one holds up.

Tempura Grade: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

ADDENDUM, because I know you care so much:
The haircut I drove to Berkeley to get. I like it. (It's more interesting than in this picture.)

Leap Tempura!

Izakaya Mai Restaurant
212 2nd Ave


I write this while watching American Idol, which might just seem like another example of me admitting to my failings for the sake of the blog, but in this case is actually relevant. You see, a lot of the time you can tell just by looking at a contestant if they are going to be potentially good or a cringe-generating disaster. But every once in a while one of them surprises you-- someone cool and together-looking bursts out with a screechy warble, or the dork in the dumb shirt sings his poorly-coifed head off. Which is all a long way of saying that I went into my dinner tonight, at a nondescript and average-looking restaurant just off of what passes in San Mateo for a main drag, without high hopes, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Not immediately, mind you. When I came in, the waitress asked if would like to sit at the sushi bar (which they almost always seem to do if you are dining solo-- I don't like it because you just don't have enough space for eating a full dinner) and seemed put out when I asked for a table, despite the fact that the place was almost empty, then seated me way back by the rear exit. So points off for service, but to their credit things did pick up some later in the evening.

Food: Like I said, given the surroundings I wasn't expecting much, though I was encouraged by the number of dishes I didn't recognize on the menu (new idea for my next project: go to every restaurant in the neighborhood and try something I've never had before). As usual, I ordered the tempura/sashimi combo ($12.95, with soup, salads (green and potato), rice and orange slices). As expected for the price, the sashimi wasn't the best, but it wasn't bad, and the tempura was really quite good. The batter was thin and crisp, even when I got to the last piece and it wasn't scalding hot anymore and, unusually, the shrimp actually had some flavor of its own, rather than just being a vaguely seafoody fried thing. Points off, again, for lack of originality in ingredient choice, particularly in including two pieces of broccoli, which is fast becoming my tempura bete noir. But overall, a highly positive dining experience.

Tempura: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

Tempura Thursday: Now With 85% More Thursday

Sushi Sam's Edomata
218 E. 3rd Ave.


I will admit, I came in with some preconceptions to this one, having come across some reviews on the web that touted it as the great place in San Mateo for sushi. So I was expecting good things and high prices, and for the most part I was not disappointed. Actually, in terms of price it wasn't that bad-- about the same as last week, in fact. The place was bright and busy, with a mix of customers and quick service.


Food: $18.95 for the tempura and sashimi combo dinner. For the second time in the increasingly misguided project, I had tempura that I would actually characterize as "good". Lightly battered, and still crisp when I got to the end; even the broccoli was eatable. I actually finished everything but the carrot because, let's face it, even battered and fried, a carrot is still just a carrot. One point lost versus the early leader (and still champion!) Oidon, due to a less interesting selection of ingredients, but overall a truly decent dish. I added back the point to the overall score because the sashimi was quite good-- tekka only, but very fresh, and no connective tissue. The rolls I saw going by looked really good too.


Tempura: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

Tempura Thursday: Special Wednesday Edition

Masu Japanese Bistro
79 E. 3rd Ave.

Early tempuraizing this week, because I didn't want to try and fight my way through the horde of sushi-crazed romantics who will descend on the restaurants tomorrow.

I came in predisposed to like this place. It's open and airy and across the street from M is For Mystery, a fine mystery bookstore. Furthermore, as soon as I sat down I got a bowl of sweet fried wonton wrapper, which didn't strike me as particularly Japanese but was very tasty. Also, after dinner they served me plate with some slices of banana with whipped cream and chocolate and cubed pineapple with a cherry (in a cup). Which was all very nice, but somewhat hard to eat, as the only utensils I had left were the two toothpicks that came with it.

Food:$18.50 for the tempura/sashimi combo. Definitely the most generous servings of the places so far. The tempura came with four shrimp, as well as a good variety of vegetables, with eggplant, zucchini and some kind of white sweet potato as the standouts. Unfortunately, the twin powers of over-battering and sogginess overcame the forces of good, and the tempura ended up being just barely above average. Also, the sashimi was somewhat suboptimal; the pieces of tuna had some connective tissue and the yellowtail was dry on one side. That said, it looked like there were some interesting rolls on the menu and the miso soup was some of the best I've had so far. Still, not really a win.

Tempura: 6/10
Overall: 7/10
Verdict: I'd go again for sushi, and to have the extras, but the big T is a no-go.

Why Tempura?

It's a reasonable question, if not one that anyone has actually asked me. But I'm going to answer it anyway. The way I see it, there are two trains of reasoning behind my choice of test dishes; I'll call them "rational" and "emotional", because that's what they are.

My rational reasoning is fairly straightforward. The way I see it, tempura is something that is hard to do well, and fairly easy to sell even if you do it badly. Therefore, only a place that really cares about the food it is serving will bother to put in the effort it takes to make really good tempura, and that sort of dedication to quality should spill over into the other things they make.

The emotional reason is, as emotional things tend to be, rooted in childhood memory. When I was about five, my family went to Japan. I don't remember it very well, but I have it on good authority that the two things I ate the most while we were there were tonkatsu and, yes, tempura. I do recall being grossed out by the sushi, but as I remember it it was the idea of eating seaweed that got to me, not the raw fish. At any rate, it set me up with a lifelong love of the Japanese fried stuff, which I think has fed into my disappointment with some of the tempura I have had recently and driven my desire to find some that recalls what I originally liked about it so much.

Tempurapalooza 2008: The Saga Continues

California Roll
41 E. 4th Ave
San Mateo, CA


Last week, while I was having my dinner, I was able to pretend fairly convincingly that I was an expat, living in Tokyo, eating at the neighborhood restaurant around the corner from my tiny furnished apartment. Tonight, with the couple to my right discussing Flickr and the band String Cheese Incident and the couple on my left chatting in Spanish, that was significantly more difficult. Especially when I realized that the servers and chefs were speaking Mandarin.

As the name suggests, this was primarily a sushi restaurant, similar to a sushi boat place but with the dishes going around on a conveyer belt under a plexiglas cover instead of boats on water. It was plenty crowded, mostly with families (which led to my favorite overheard comment of the evening: a boy of about six or seven who declared, "I LOVE sushi." Only in California, folks.) Some of the rolls looking interesting, but I was here for tempura, so tempura it was. I got the combination bento, with gyoza and California roll, because if a place has a dish in its name you really ought to try it.

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting much from this one, and unfortunately I was not particularly surprised. As usual, the tempura started out tasty, as long as it was hot, but it went downhill fast. The broccoli was severely oversaturated with batter, and there was a large piece of green pepper, my least favorite tempura vegetable. The gyoza were fine, and the roll was pleasingly cucumber-free, if made with fake crab. This is also the only time I've had miso soup with mushrooms and sweet potato in it, served with a spoon. All in all, not my favorite, though it's possible it would be better to just go for sushi.

Tempura Grade: 3/10
Overall: 4/10

TempuraQuest 2: The Sequel

Oidon Restaurant
71 E 4th Ave
San Mateo, CA

Another Thursday, another restaurant. This one was definitely an improvement, if not promising from the outset. Tonight's destination, though well marked on the front door, turned out to be located up an unprepossessing flight of stairs, above a video store. It was a small place, almost windowless, with a few tables up front and more seats along a counter facing into the tiny kitchen. This is where I sat; it seems to be the place for solo diners. The place wasn't exactly crowded, but they were doing steady business. As far as I could tell, I was the only person who ordered in English.

Food: $15 for the Tempura Dinner, with miso soup, salad, and some kind of pickled seaweed with what I think were mushrooms. The tempura was far better than what I had before, crisper and more lightly battered. Along with the usual shrimp and vegetables, there were also some small butterflied fish, and lotus root, plus something I thought was okra but turned out to be a hot pepper. Whoops. There were no combination dinners offered; in fact, I don't think I recognized more than about a quarter of the total items on the menu. This is not a bad thing.

Tempura Grade: 8/10
Overall Grade: 8/10

San Mateo: The Quest For Tempura

As you may know, I recently moved to San Mateo, California. It is a fine place, if somewhat heavy on the yuppie factor, and short of quality bakeries. What it does have, though, is a lot of Japanese restaurants; approximately five hundred in the downtown area, by my estimate. This is good, because I like Japanese food. I particularly like tempura, if it is good, but that is the problem. Lately, it seems, most of the tempura I have had has not been very good, but thick and greasy and over-battered. But it is my belief that good tempura does exist and I only have to find it, which is why I have devised a plan:
Every Thursday, from now until I get bored or move, I am going to go to a different Japanese restaurant in downtown San Mateo and order their tempura (if possible, in a combo dinner). I will eat it, judge it, and report back here, with pictures.

And so it begins:




Kisaku Restaurant
47 E. 4th Ave
San Mateo, CA

General: Fairly busy for a Thursday, about thirty percent full when I got there with more coming in as I left. Service prompt and reasonably attentive. Damp towel sealed in plastic at each setting, for cleaning hands before eating (I think). Chopsticks only.

Food: $17 for a combination dinner of tempura and sashimi, with pickled vegetables, soup and rice. Tempura was representative of the problems with the dish: tasty and crisp when first served, soggy when it cooled. Sashimi (tuna) was very good. Possibly a better place for sushi than cooked food.

Tempura grade: 5/10
Overall grade: 7/10