Kuala Lumpur - Fab Tempura at Tatsu

[klyeoh]

Cowabunga, after 18 months, > 12 restaurants later ... and RM2,000 poorer, I finally found a Japanese restaurant in KL that serves tempura which is worth writing home about - Tatsu at the InterContinental Hotel (sorry, Kuriya).

Tatsu's Executive Chef Tetsuya Yanagida is good - as good as any chef I'd encountered in Tokyo or Osaka. The restaurant evoked the typical retro-60s feel which many restaurants in Japan liked to maintain - simple furniture, calm & serene surroundings, clean Zen-like lines.

The seafood tempura set (RM150++ or around USD50 plus service/taxes) started off with a trio of not-very-impressive starters: a crisp salad bowl with overly-vinegary dressing, a bland tofu-carrot-daikon dish, and a steamed "chawan-mushi" which I can re-produce at home myself with good eggs, dashi stock, and bits of chicken, mushroom and fishcake.

But then, came the piece de resistance: the mixed seafood tempura set: the large prawn was bursting with flavors, the soft-shell crab extravagantly rich and meltingly delicious inside, the fish fillets, scallop - oh, what a revelation: everything was simply perfect.

There was also a small plate of salmon & tuna sashimi at the side, but that's superfluous.

The miso soup was a bit disappointing.

Still, overall, it was a superb tempura meal - at least where KL is concerned.

There is no specialist tempura restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, the likes of Ten-Ichi in Tokyo, or Singapore's Tenshin, where you sit at a counter in front of a tempura chef who coats each piece of the ingredient in batter and fry them right in front of you, before he pops the freshly crisp-fried morsel onto your plate straight from the frying pan using a pair of extra-long serving chopsticks.

But Tatsu KL is definitely worth checking out.

Address details
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Tatsu
1st Floor, InterContinental Hotel Kuala Lumpur
165, Jalan Ampang,
50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: [phone]

[huiray]

The meal *looks* good, visually at least. Can one get double portions of the tempura and skip most of the other stuff? (I suppose that would then be a la carte, but it must be possible?)

What are those posts with cup-like thingies? Lighting fixtures?

[klyeoh]

I'm sure we can get tempura a la carte. And yes, those appear to be light fittings, though I don't really fancy warm bulbs next to me at a dining table :-D

[huiray]

I can't imagine that they would not have a high attrition rate for those cup thingies with folks getting up, moving around, etc knocking them over!

Really good tempura is wonderful.