tempura, anyone?

HERE'S AN example of what I do. Last week I went to what is now my favorite tempura restaurant of all time. Below is a short review I wrote about it, which will appear on my company's website in its September debut.

IMOYA
RATING: 4.5/5
REVIEW:
Imoya is one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo. I ducked under the white sign at the door and sat on a waiting bench for one of 15 seats at the bar. At first I was worried about the long wait, but the turnover rate at lunch time is surprisingly fast - I was seated in 10 minutes. A friendly old man asked each customer one word as they took their seat: "Tempura?" Every once in a while there's some maverick who wants more "ebi", “ebi teisyoku” is on the menu, but most of the time everyone simply nods. When it was my turn, I asked for tempura, and was immediately given hot tea and sat back to watch the old man carefully drop breaded strips of fish and vegetables into a giant wood cauldron full of boiling oil, his hands just inches away, red from the heat.
Imoya is clean, bright, and minimally decorated. Everything is metal or exposed wood - the ceiling's wood beams, the metal cooking equipment in front of you, the great wood tempura cauldron.

I received my food in 10 minutes. Hot miso soup, hot tempura, and more hot tea; it was a Tokyo summer day and I perspired helplessly, but I didn't care: the miso soup was "asari," made with very small clams and slightly sweet. I've never seen it executed this well, and this is a tempura shop. I was handed a plate of tempura perhaps 10 seconds old, and a large bowl of rice to eat it over. The ebi, sweet potato, parsley, and eggplant were all very fresh, and the batter itself tasted light and crunchy - I just wanted more.
I had all I wanted to eat for 600 yen - that's cheaper than McDonald's! I'd go back if they tripled the price.
There's no English whatsoever, but just say "tempura" - it's all the Japanese you need to know.




Top: fresh tempura; middle: Imoya interior;
bottom: entrance, with traditional shoji sliding doors