Tempura Asakusa SAKURA

A tempura shop where everything is gluten-free and halal certified 🍤 For the first time, I met gluten-free tempura I can confidently recommend ✨ It doesn't seem gluten-free! Eating it without knowing it was gluten-free, you'd find it just as good as any tempura. It's regular, delicious tempura with thin, crispy batter! Not just the batter — the fillings were also great. The plump, moist shiitake that even I (who doesn't like shiitake) could enjoy without any off-notes; in addition to whitefish (kisu), what looked like another whitefish that I thought "surely this isn't squid?" turned out to be squid so tender that chopsticks could cut through it. Not just the ingredients, but the chef's skill showed through. Really regretted not trying the wagyu tempura. Every menu item has volume. Painfully giving up on the wagyu, I went with the smallest item — the seafood tendon — but even that's more than enough for a light eater. At the end, you bring your bowl up to the counter and pour dashi over it, but I couldn't leave rice for the dashi-chazuke step. Even though refills were offered, I was already too full to ask for more rice. A shop where you should arrive hungry to also try the wagyu tempura and dashi-chazuke (lol). The tempura is served on a separate plate. The bowl rice comes with just sauce and sesame, and you make your own tendon by topping it with tempura yourself. Extra sauce is provided for more flavor, but no tentsuyu (dipping broth) comes out — so it's truly a tendon experience. The finishing dashi-chazuke style and many other touches feel aimed at inbound tourism. Cherry blossoms hanging from the ceiling, restroom flooring that looks like tatami (probably fake) (lol), wagyu being a standard tempura menu item — every detail shows omotenashi (hospitality) so visitors can fully experience Japanese-ness. As a Japanese person, I could find and enjoy these touches too. The portion sizes also seem aimed at inbound tourism. The interior has only 10 counter seats.