Let's see, Cheap... Great Tempura... oh, did I mention crowded?

Restaurant: Tempura Imoya / 天ぷら　いもや
Neighborhood: Jimbocho / 神保町
Style: Tempura
Website: None, but see this tabelog page

I was meeting my friends Suzuki-san and Namikoshi-san from DCAJ for lunch, and I thought about getting tempura. If you've only ever eaten tempura as it's made in America, you can't have any appreciation for the form. And, even in Japan, the tempura you get at most general-purpose restaurants is just OK. The only way to have truly great tempura is to go to a tempura-ya, a shop where they serve just tempura. I was lucky enough to have my friend Scott Frazier take me to such a place on a long-ago trip to Japan, and it totally changed my idea of what tempura is!

A little searching in Japanese found a lot of recommendations for Tempura Imoya, which is in Jimbocho not too far from my friend's work. I asked Suzuki-san about it, and he said it's famous and in fact he had tried to go there before. But, he had only gotten to the restaurant at 11:45am and so they couldn't get in for lunch! He suggested meeting there at 11:15.

If you go there, the tabelog page map will send you to the shop on Hakusan-dori, which is the Ten-don (Tempura Donburi) shop. The actual tempura shop is on the side street just south of the Ten-don shop. The two places have exactly the same name and sign, only the menu differs!

At the tempura shop, like a lot of good specialty tempura places, there's not a lot of choice in the ordering. You can either get the Tempura Teishoku (set meal) which has one each of 6 kinds of Tempura, rice (a generous amount), miso soup, and tea; or the Tempura Teishoku Ebikei, which is the same meal but all of the Tempura is ebi (shrimp). You can also ask for rice oomori (free), which means they'll heap your bowl extra-high with rice (unless you're unbelievably hungry there's no need).

And, as you'd expect from this kind of place, the tempura was awesome! The tempura you get at a specialty place like this is completely different from the greasy, heavy food that goes by that name in America. Japanese specialty tempura is very light and almost completely grease-free (they'll often put the tempura on a piece of paper, and there will only be a few small grease spots on the paper afterwards). They control the batter, the oil, and the temperature to make for a very different experience. On the day I was there, the tempura teishoku included one each of ebi (shrimp), fish, kabocha (pumpkin), a leafy green, a root vegetable, and something else that I think was seafood of some kind.

Besides the tempura, I really have to call out the miso soup. It was a red miso made with a lot of small clams, and had plenty of taste to stand up to being drank along with the tempura.

Finally, like a lot of tempura houses, Tempura Imoya is cheap! The Tempura Teishoku is 650 yen (I don't know how much extra for ebikei, none of us got it). The only downside is that, as you'd expect given the above, this place is crowded. We had no problem getting seats since Suzuki-san and I got there at 11:15, but the place was full when Namikoshi-san showed up a bit late at 11:25. By 11:35, we had finished and people were waiting, so we gave up our seats. To actually do the catching up and talking we wanted to do, we had to migrate to a Doutour around the corner. Nevertheless, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Tempura Imoya for your light, crunchy food fix!