Tempura

Great tempura depends on contrast: a batter mixed only enough to barely combine ice-cold water, egg, and soft wheat flour, left lumpy on purpose so it fries into a lacy, almost transparent crust. Ingredients such as shrimp, kisu whiting, shiso leaves, sweet potato, and kabocha squash are dipped and lowered into oil kept around 170–180°C, where they cook for under two minutes so the coating stays pale and impossibly light rather than deeply browned.

It's traditionally served with tentsuyu, a warm dashi-based dipping sauce cut with grated daikon and ginger, or simply a pinch of matcha salt. Good tempura restaurants fry each piece to order at a counter, serving it within seconds so the crust never has time to soften — a world away from the heavier, pre-fried tempura found in some fast casual settings.

Tempura's origins trace back to Portuguese Jesuit missionaries and traders who arrived in Nagasaki in the 1540s. Catholic tradition observed "Ember Days" — quarterly periods of fasting from meat — during which the Portuguese ate fried fish and vegetables instead; many food historians trace the word "tempura" to the Latin "tempora," referring to these fasting times, or to the Portuguese "temperar," meaning to season.

Japanese cooks adapted the technique over the following centuries, and by the Edo period (1603–1868) tempura had become a popular street food sold from yatai stalls around Edo (present-day Tokyo), often featuring fresh fish from Tokyo Bay. As dining culture formalised in the Meiji era, dedicated tempura-ya restaurants emerged, refining the batter and frying technique into the precise, counter-side craft still practised today, with some Tokyo tempura chefs training for a decade before frying professionally.

For more on where to eat it today, see our food lover's guide to Milan, Tokyo & Seoul.