Hakatatempura Takao FukuokaPARCO

Was on a business trip to Fukuoka, and was searching for somewhere to have lunch around Tenjin. I hadn’t done my homework, and was wandering around to find a nice place to eat local food. I stumbled on this tempura restaurant by chance, walking into the basement of the Parco department store. In ma...ny cases, restaurants in such locations are not of high quality, but I found a line in front of this one, and so I decided to give it a chance. The restaurant was small and crowded, with counter seats and several tables. I ordered the tempura lunch (teishoku) for 980 yen (CA$12), as well as a pint of beer. Even thought they were quite busy, this restaurant serves tempura the good-old-fashioned way, bringing each piece to the table as they are fried (and not serving the pieces on a single dish). The timing at which they brought each tempura was also spot on, and so I suspect the chef was looking to see how I was doing. The tempura was actually one of the best I have had (and I used to live in Tokyo), and I would never have imagined the quality given the price. I was especially surprised with the shrimp. I don’t know if it is its freshness or the way it was cooked, but the shrimp was plump, and I swear I thought the center of the shrimp was rare. There were two pieces of shrimp in the lunch, and I slowly savored the second piece. This restaurant also has a jar of spicy pollock roe (mentaiko) with seaweed (combo) on the table, which was delicious. I put a good amount on my rice and it was superb.

Visited March 2017