Our Food
All of our ingredients are selected and prepared by our experienced chef based on years of practice in traditional ways. Our goal is to ensure our food a visual delight for customers.
We make tempura all year long, but the vegetables and seafood we offer may vary seasonally. Serving exceptional local vegetables and top-quality seafood is our priority, so please ask our friendly staff about our seasonal specials.
What is tempura?
At first glance, tempura appears to be a simple dish consisting of batter-coated vegetables, shrimp or fish that have been deep-fried. However, properly prepared tempura is so much more.
Imagine the freshest shrimp cooked to tender, sweet perfection and enveloped in a thin, crunchy lace shell. Tempura is the gild on the culinary lily, adding a textural crown to the most perfect morsels.
Tempura refers to both the cooking method and the finished dish. The approach emphasizes using the freshest, best-quality ingredients and letting their natural flavours take centre stage. It’s a wonderful frying technique that enhances the natural flavour of foods and adds texture. Raw vegetables or seafood are dunked in a simple batter and then fried briefly in a mild-flavoured oil, just long enough for the batter to crisp and the food to cook through. As the batter cooks, it forms a translucent coating that protects the tempura and prevents it from absorbing too much oil. Unlike some versions of batter-fried food, traditional tempura is crisp, light and fresh-tasting. It also works well with Canadian ingredients.
Tempura does not use breadcrumbs (panko) in the coating. Fried foods that are coated with breadcrumbs are considered "FURAI"—Japanese-invented western-style, deep-fried foods such as Katsu or Korrokke.
Roots of Tempura
Tempura is said to be inherited from Portugal to Nagasaki, Kyushu together with guns in the middle of the 16th century. The word “tempura” is said to be come from the Portuguese word “tenpero”, which means cooking. There is another theory that the word may have come from “tenpora” which means “Catholic’s prayer day” in Portuguese. Tempura was initially categorized as a precious food since the dishes cooked used plenty of expensive cooking oil.
With the increase in vegetable oil and sesame oil production in the Edo period, tempura became a food more widely available. However, concerns over smoke and fire due to frying in oil meant that tempura was largely made at restaurants rather than at home.
In the past, tempura was eaten as a snack rather than a main dish. Later, tempura, sushi and soba were categorized as “Edo’s no Zanmai” (江戸の三味, 3 dishes from the Edo Period), that became very popular among the ordinary Japanese.
How to eat Tempura
When eating tempura it is a good idea to always take pieces from the edges or top. Lightly mix the grated daikon into the tempura dipping sauce. Holding the dipping sauce bowl in one hand, quickly dip the tempura in the mixture before eating. Items that are difficult to bite off, such as squid, should not be placed back on your plate between bites. With sauce bowl in hand, finish each piece of tempura. In the event you are not able to finish the whole piece, it is considered polite to place the remainder out of the view of other people.