204 The Crown Jewel

 
Happy new year! Went to Macao on new year's eve for a countdown concert, had some free time during lunch hour, so decided to go to this renowned tempura restaurant from Tokyo at the high end Crown Hotel and Casino at Taipa to have a relaxing lunch.

It was weekday, the restaurant was literally empty, three of us were the only customers there for the whole lunch time. I feel sad about that because this really is a nice and decent restaurant, maybe gamblers shun the idea of a place specialising in deep frying food. That's really a shame... I just hope this restaurant could survive. Go there and have lunch at least, the basic lunch sets are just under 200 dollars, a very good deal indeed.

The name of the restaurant is 天政 Tenmasa, its mother restaurant in Tokyo.

Salt and lemon juice on table for each diner

The chef, who is going to cook everything in front of customers, is exhibiting today's ingredients to us

Three of us ordered 2 lunch sets and some extras from the a la cart menu. This is the appetizers combo for one of the set lunch; chestnut tofu in the glass bowl, smoke eel rolls in front and Japanese sweet potato on the side. The chestnut tofu is very good.

Appetizer from another lunch set, this is eggplant jelly topped with grated Japanese yama imo, very delicate and delicious.

Here comes the tempura: 海老 shrimp

鰍 sculpin

蓮根 lotus root. There is some fish paste alike sandwiched between 2 pieces of lotus root slices.

蕪 turnip

椎茸 shiitake mushroom, this is the best fresh shiitake I've ever had, though dried ones found in Cantonese dishes could be even better.

海老芋 ebi taro, a speciality from Kyoto.

牡蠣 oyster, wrapped in 海苔 seaweed.

This one I'm not quite sure what it is, I guess it's sea eel 鰻.

百合根 lily bulb on the left, 栗 chestnut on the right

The chestnut is so good.

紫蘇 shiso leaves.

The batter is made freshly in front of you, and last only for one meal serving. The waitress said, the batter will get bad after a while, so the chef will make a new batter for every serving. It's a kind of wasting food because just a very small portion of it is needed for coating the ingredients, yet this also reflects how serious Japanese are to their food.

The waitresses display the fresh ingredients of the day to us once again, to see if we'd like something else which isn't included in our sets.

There's a sushi bar in the restaurant, so we ordered some sushi too. The beautiful one in front is とろろ昆布 tororo seaweed sushi, is a kind of processed dried seaweed. At the back is 卵 egg sushi.

This is 和牛スタミナロール wagyu roll, with grilled spicy wagyu, lettuce, white leek and baked egg with spicy sauce.

梅紫蘇巻 umeshiso roll, with pickled plum, cucumber and perilla (shiso leaves). Delicious!

This is the staple dish of one of the set: 白子天婦羅と金目鯛の石焼き雑炊唐墨添え testis tempura porridge served in a stone bowl with dried mullet roe. The testis tempura is delicious, at first I worried about the testis tempura ( 白子天婦羅, which is the milt of cod) would be wasted for making a bowl of congee, yet the result is satisfying.

another staple from another set: かき揚天丼 kakiage - assorted vegetables and seafood deep friend in batter, chopped and mixed with rice, looks humble but tastes great.

A bowl of green tea before desserts.

First dessert comes with the set: さつま芋天婦羅のアイスクリームのせ sweet potato tempura and ice cream. This is definitely a classy version of those similar dessert you can get from 麻布茶房, only way better.

This one is from the other set: 和風杏仁豆腐 soybean milk tofu, seasonal fruits dressed in black sugar sauce and soybean flour. Actually the Japanese description from the menu just stated 'Japanese style almond tofu', don't know why the English description is totally different. The dish is more like how it's described in English though. Looks great but tastes just so so.

This is the star of the whole meal, we nearly miss it out. We saw this dish さつま芋のブランデーがけ imo brandy, from the online menu the night before we go to this restaurant, and decided that we must have this one. Then the waitress insisted that the one comes together with the set (which is the above one with ice cream on top, さつま芋天婦羅のアイスクリームのせ) is very similar, if not identical to imo brandy, and strongly suggested us not to order. So we didn't order. But after we'd finished the さつま芋天婦羅のアイスクリームのせ, we thought although this tastes very good, but doesn't have a slightest trace of brandy, so we ordered the imo brandy again. It turned out to be a totally different dish, and this imo brandy is of course a much more exciting dish than the ice-cream topped さつま芋天婦羅のアイスクリームのせ.

I guess the imo (sweet potato) is soaked in brandy, then deep fried. When it's cooked and still hot, the chef sprinkled some powder sugar on top of it and caramelised the sugar with a few drops of hot oil from the frying pot, and finished it with a light brandy sauce. It tastes so good, definitely a dessert for grown ups.