A note on the words: tendon is crisp tempura laid over a hot bowl of rice with a savory-sweet sauce, omakase is a chef’s tasting course where the kitchen chooses what you eat, and anago is saltwater eel, here fried crisp and elongated in a light batter said to use no egg.
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Ten Soso on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. Even though I was just at Mikawa the other day! — that said, one thing led to another and here I was eating tempura in Roppongi Hills again. The place I visited this time is “Ten Soso”, located on the 5th floor restaurant floor of the Hills. When I searched through my past posts, I saw I wrote about it opening as a new spot back in 2018, so is it already in its 5th year? Time really flies.
The atmosphere inside the shop hasn’t changed much either, with an L-shaped counter and two table seats partitioned off like private rooms.
Ten Soso omakase tempura 1 — 20,000 yen
Ten Soso omakase tempura 2 — 15,000 yen
Ten Soso omakase tempura 3 — 10,000 yen
Tempura set meal “I” — 8,800 yen
Hills tendon — 10,000 yen
Tokujo tendon — 4,800 yen
As always, the pricing is completely off the charts, ha.
So this time, I decided to go with the Tokujo tendon. When we were chatting about what on earth the Hills tendon would be like, apparently it is the 10,000-yen omakase tempura 3 served over a rice bowl. Could all of that even fit on top? At any rate, I gathered that it must be an incredible tendon, ha. Maybe I’ll try it once on some special occasion.
And after waiting a bit, here is what came freshly fried.
Hmm, looks delicious. The shrimp comes with the head on, looking almost like fried shrimp, and the anago eel stretched out nice and straight looks lovely, ha. There’s quite a variety of ingredients: shishito pepper, pumpkin, scallop, sea bass, shrimp, anago, and shiitake mushroom, or something like that?
Apparently this restaurant doesn’t use egg in the tempura batter, frying with just flour and water. People do say that not using egg makes it fry up nice and crisp, after all. Taking a bite, it’s super crispy. The anago can practically be eaten like a snack. If there were a crispy, airy treat like this, I’d want to eat it all the time, ha. Because the shrimp has its head on, having the tomalley inside is great. Mixing the sauce and the rice is delicious too.
I had wondered if there might not be that much rice, but with so many ingredients it left me thoroughly full.
Pricey as always, but the joh tendon might have been pretty delicious. At 4,800 yen, it might actually feel quite reasonable. Somehow, it looks far tastier now than in the photo of the tendon back in 2018. Next time, the 10,000-yen tendon?! I wonder what on earth would need to happen for me to eat that.
Ten Soso (Tempura / Roppongi Station, Nogizaka Station, Azabu-juban Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.4
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
