A note on the words: at a tempura counter the chef fries one piece at a time and hands it straight to you, and you eat it with either salt or tentsuyu, a light dipping sauce. Sumire and Tsubaki — violet and camellia — are the names of the two lunch courses.
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Tempura Kondo on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hangover Meshi here. I booked Tempura Kondo shortly before leaving Japan. I had wanted to go for lunch, rang up, and they had a lunch slot a month later — which happened to fall right after I got back, so the timing was perfect. And now the day had finally come. Kondo-san turns up on television often, and I had wanted to eat his tempura for the longest time. Very much looking forward to it. The place is in Ginza.
Take the lift to the ninth floor and the noren curtain is right there. I gave my name, and on the way to my seat I caught sight of Kondo-san himself. So he does the main frying even at lunch. Delightful.
Lunch, Sumire 8,800 yen
Lunch, Tsubaki 12,100 yen
You choose between the two courses once you are seated.
I had been thinking of the Tsubaki, but was told the sweet potato tempura is not part of either course. Hmm. The sweet potato is the famous one and I wanted to eat it, and adding it to the Tsubaki would probably have been too much food. So I asked for the Sumire with the sweet potato added.
Right, ordered. Now the good part.
Lemon and salt. Be careful not to absent-mindedly squeeze the lemon into the salt, or all of the salt becomes lemon salt. (I did.)
To drink, Perrier.
Mozuku seaweed in vinegar. Fine strands, and only lightly sharp.
Crisply fried, and the fragrance of that against the concentrated flavour of the prawn is very good.
Next out, the prawn.
I knew it would be, but this prawn is extremely good. Judged exactly right, so that the springy prawn releases a rush of flavour as you bite. I am in the camp that eats the tails at a proper tempura shop, and this one went down easily without anything left behind.
Another one. I could eat any number of these prawns.
Asparagus, cut into three to make it easier to handle. The root end is hot, they said, so start from the tip.
Very good indeed. A tempura where you can taste the sweetness of the vegetable properly. As you would expect.
The way the texture shifts a little as you work down towards the root is good too.
Renkon, lotus root. A crisp snap and a lovely sweetness.
When a place does vegetable tempura this well, you know it is the real thing.
They halve it for you, so you can have one with salt and one with the dipping sauce.
The classic. Kisu, whiting.
The flesh comes out light and delicate and goes beautifully with salt. This is the ingredient that shows you what crisp-outside, fluffy-inside really means.
This looked hot too, so I started with the sauce — dipping it takes the edge off the heat so you can eat it straight away.
The flavour of the aubergine is wonderful. I had the second piece with salt, which gives you the aubergine directly.
A thick scallop. Looking at the cut face, the middle is still barely cooked. Wasabi salt is the recommendation here. And — delicious. The sweetness of the scallop comes right through. Personally I thought the judgement of the heat on this scallop was outstanding. Lovely.
Lucky to get a wild mountain vegetable. Spring tempura is at its best with these.
The slight bitterness against the salt is hard to beat.
And here, at last, the sweet potato tempura.
This one takes a very long time — it has been frying since the beginning, then comes out and is held warm, and only now is it served. Eating it, it is soft and floury with the sweetness drawn right out, almost a dessert. I can see why some people come here for this alone. A slice that thick has to be cooked slowly all the way through.
Last, the anago tempura.
The sound as you cut the finished anago cleanly in two with your chopsticks is very satisfying, and the outside is crisp enough to eat like a snack. Anago is good with salt, but it goes just as well with the sauce. I asked for rice to be brought at this point and ate it together with the rice — an excellent match. Very good.
And to finish, strawberries.
Kondo-san at last, after wanting to come for so long. Well — there is a reason he is famous, and every piece of tempura was very good. To eat something this good at lunchtime is a real pleasure. And thinking about value, this is rather good indeed. No wonder it is hard to book. That Kondo-san does the frying properly even at lunch made it a fine memory. If I can get an evening booking sometime, I would like to try drinking alongside good tempura too. It was delicious.
Tempura Kondo (tempura / Ginza Station, Yurakucho Station, Higashi-Ginza Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★★☆ 4.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
