Sunday, November 05, 2006

Tenshin, The Regent, Singapore

My lunches are generally pretty sane because I like my dinners to be huge. We were feeling abit hungry that afternoon and decided to have something light. When "lightness" came to mind, we immediately thought of the light and crisp batter used for the tempura at Tenshin, so off we went.

They have the whole range of condiments here but I seldom use them because the freshness of the ingredients speak for themselves.

Started off with the appetizer of cold spinach topped with bonito flakes. I'm a sucker for bonito flakes and I used to watch Popeye abit when I was a kid, so this went down very well with me.

The salad was a typical Japanese one with crisp greens and the tasty tangy citrus dressing. The crunchy bits on top were freshly fried as well.

Tenshin is basically a tempura joint, they do not have a huge range of dishes here but what limited choices they have, they do very well but stick to the cooked dishes because their sashimi is really only average. The deep-frying oil used here is imported in from Japan; this plus their batter recipe creates a finish which is most crisp and light. There's hardly any grease left on it once it's fried and this can be illustrated by the near spotless greaseproof paper sheet on the plate.

The grinded radish tastes fresh and the tempura sauce is fragrant without being overly salty.

The lunch set is priced at 30+++SGD which makes it really quite reasonable for the quality you get here. The vegetables are extremely fresh as well and although they're deep-fried, there is no trace of oil, it's almost as though they were boiled or steamed.

The alternative to the tempura set is the tendon set which is very good in its own right. You get a slight variation in the ingredients but the tasty sauce on the soft and fluffy rice makes it a very satisfying meal too.

The miso soup here is excellent, exhibiting depth of flavor without that obvious taste of salt. It goes very well in between mouthfuls of rice.

Finished off with a refreshing mango sorbet, this was really one sweet way to end the meal.

D

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

mmmmmm that looks so YUMMILICIOUS!

I'm super bored stucked at home with lousy(opps) hawker food near my house almost every day.. nothing much to blog about.

I love japanese food~! Especially Salmon, in any form~

But sadly, having some financial difficulties here.

girl(lazy to log in ;p)

Anonymous said...

may i ask how much is u spend on food a month? jus curious.

zhengning said...

Cool! It's jap food again :D How coincidence, i've just posted jap food too. Lol!

The tempura looks great, but the mango sorbet tempts me more. woah~

Lord Dianabol said...

The ebi fry is looking mighty fresh.

Anonymous said...

yum yumzz..tempura..
just a thought, have u ever made or tried making beer batter chips? had my 1st taste at curtin tav and WOW it was good!

D said...

BBG: Lazy you haha. I tend not reply to anonymous people sometimes =P Everyone remembers how it was like to be a student and although those were the times when you weren't really financially super, some of your best memories will come from your schooldays undoubtedly! =D

anon: I actually use the Lunar calender as opposed to the Gregorian calender because it sort of splits the conventional month in two making it seem like I spend only half as much. Haha, ok that was a joke but hmm how much do I spend? Sometimes I don't really want to know =S

zhengning: I love most Japanese foods except sashimi, the tempura is really one of the best in town but the mango sorbet was tasty as well =)

Lady dianabol: Ebi fry is actually the one with breadcrumbs, damn, I feel like eating ebi fry now!

gene: I've done beer batter for fish but chips? I haven't tried that, actually I don't even batter my chips before frying them.

Anonymous said...

oh yeaah now u remind me, yan and i did beer tempura batter thingy quite a while ago and it was shockingly very nice (cos we cooked it!), esp for the mushrooms. if ur extremely bored n have extra potatoes and beer lying about, give it a go! :D

D said...

gene: Ah yes, I do love tempura shrooms. I guess battering spuds would be similar to that of tempura sweet potato sans the sweetness haha.

LiquidShaDow said...

Woah, I'm really late to this and I've just heard about Tenshin lately. Hey D, what's the difference in price and ingredients between the tendon and the tempura set? I'm thinking of doing a lunch date there.