Reviews Tempura Matsui

Amazing! The tempura here is so good. You get a tray of side dishes and then get served pieces as they are cooked. The shrimp was my favorite, and the uni wrapped in seaweed (additional $20) + dipped in the salt was delicious. The service is A+ quality. All the staff were extremely helpful and friendly. We really enjoyed the overall dining experience and the lunch was very reasonably priced at ~$55 for the set menu. Would definitely come back.

Unique and impressive place for high end Japanese Tempura. It’s a omikase menu with many courses of fish and seasonal vegetables. Everything is high quality and the tempura, fried immediately before you get it, is light and heightens the texture and flavor of the ingredients. Service also was top notch. It’s expensive, but there are a ton of high end sushi places around and just one of these. Try it!

We came at night for the tempura omakase. For each piece, a consistent tempura skin wraps the tempura, with not much surface area for flakes or crunch. The skin wasn’t too crispy either, instead often feeling quite oily. Quite a few pieces were on the side of overfried. Service was alright, and not at all personalized for nearly 300 per person; the dishes were hastily explained. The appetizers to start were good, but not necessarily appetizing. The baby yellowtail was remarkable in terms of texture, playfully tender without any fishiness. The foie gras chawanmushi had some of the softest chawanmushi I’ve had. However, the foie gras flavor was covered by a strong dashi and mirin. Now onto tempura. The shrimp was deliciously sweet, but it could’ve been more tender, and the tempura wasn’t crispy. The second piece of the same shrimp, this time meant to be dipped in dashi, was bigger and better in terms of tempura quality. The shrimp heads that came after was especially palatable, and its high surface area was ideal to capture a light crunch. The okra was perfect. It was fried just right, which intensified its subtle flavor. The Hokkaido scallop was sweet and slightly raw inside, but could have been less cooked. Some creativity was exhibited in the middle courses. The fish was presented very creatively: the bone removed and to be had separately. The meat was so soft with some good crunch in the tempura flakes. The bone was great too; it was more deeply fried for pure crunch. The technique required for this course was outstanding. Next, the fluke wrapped uni was also creative. The uni was hot and doesn’t lose any flavor, and it was a surprisingly great pairing with the soft fish shell. The lotus root and shrimp paste 'sandwich' was featured a less ideal root that was more mature, quite starchy and less crunchy. The rice to end has a more deep fried tempura that was almost a little stale. The Dessert was quite creative: slightly jellified grapefruit with wine, then served in a cream whisky sauce. It was very tasty.

We went for lunch, which was a great deal at $60 per person. The tempura was really well made and didn’t taste too oily. The sides were not bad. The servers were attentive and answered our questions well. Overall, the experience was pretty decent and the lunch course was worth for the Michelin restaurant experience.