Tempura Kanda Honten: tempura sets and tendon in Kanda

Tempura Kanda Honten is the name that comes up in searches; the shop on the sign says Tempura Saito Kanda Honten (天ぷらさいとう神田本店). Same place: twenty seats a few minutes from JR Kanda station, frying to order since January 2016. Weekday lunch sets start at ¥1,050, and every one of them comes with rice, miso soup, tsukudani and pickles refilled as often as you want.

One thing to sort out before you walk over. There is no tendon rice bowl on this menu. The only tendon is braised beef tendon, 牛すじ煮込み, at ¥660, served as a side dish. I would rather tell you in the first line than have you order at the counter hunting for a bowl.

Tempura Saito Kanda Honten: a 20-seat Kanda tempura shop since 2016

The shop behind the name

The counter fries to order and hands the pieces over one at a time, in batter the shop thins itself. The house states plainly that it never serves tempura fried in advance, and that single decision explains the pause between your first and second piece. Food arrives hot, in order, the way a tempura counter should.

You can follow the official site and the house Instagram feed @tenpura3110, which is where seasonal items and closure days turn up first. On Tabelog the restaurant sits at 3.46 out of 5 from 298 reviews, a normal slightly mixed score for a twenty-seat shop, and it matches what you get: careful tempura, short menus, no theatre.

Three tiers, one price ladder

The menu is built in three named tiers, and that is where the prices live. A 梅 (ume) piece is ¥209: the vegetable end of the list, eggplant, sweet potato, asparagus. A 竹 (take) piece is ¥253 and covers shrimp, squid, kisu and maitake mushrooms. The 松 (matsu) tier runs ¥352 to ¥550 a piece and is where the money goes.

Because the tiers price single pieces, a table can order across them instead of committing to one plate. And if you would rather not choose, two house assortments do the picking for you: a silver 銀 set and a gold 金 set. I would take the silver one on a first visit and save the gold one for an occasion.

Where tendon fits, and where it does not

Search for tendon and you will not find a bowl. The kitchen does tempura and a short list of sides, and the one tendon dish is 牛すじ煮込み, braised beef tendon at ¥660, simmered until it gives way and served with rice. If a tendon bowl was the plan, this is the wrong address.

Two other lines move the bill before you order anything. The restaurant adds a seating charge of ¥330 per guest (席料). A small plate of chikuwa (fish cake) also arrives automatically as the shop's otoshi, an appetizer you did not ask for, which the restaurant guide bills as a seating fee rather than a dish. My advice: read the menu knowing that the price list is not the whole cost of the meal.

Getting to 28 Kandatomiyamacho

Kanda first, then Iwamotocho and Shinnihonbashi

The address is 28 Kandatomiyamacho, Chiyoda-ku, first floor of the Tazawa Kanda Building, and the restaurant's own site puts JR Kanda station at a five-minute walk on foot. Measured on foot, the same walk comes out at 4 minutes and 315 metres.

Two Toei stations are just as close: Iwamotocho at 4 minutes and 320 metres, Shinnihonbashi at 7 minutes and 513 metres. Iwamotocho sits on the Toei Mita Line and Shinnihonbashi on the Toei Asakusa Line, and the Toei station directory tells you which train you are actually catching.

Driving is pointless. The restaurant has no parking of its own, though coin-operated parking sits in the surrounding blocks if you insist. I would take the train and walk the last few minutes.

Otemachi is not the stop to plan around

Otemachi is not the closest stop to 28 Kandatomiyamacho. The measured walks to this address are 315 and 320 metres from Kanda and Iwamotocho, and 513 metres from Shinnihonbashi, and Otemachi is not among them.

It matters because a map search for tempura near Otemachi hands you a different set of restaurants and a longer walk than you signed up for. Search by the address, or by Kanda Station, and keep Iwamotocho and Shinnihonbashi as the two fallbacks.

For me, the Chuo-Sobu local out of Kanda is the easy option: it covers Shinjuku, Ochanomizu and Asakusabashi on one train, and you are at the door in a few minutes. The three stations above all sit in the same pocket of the district.

The room: 12 counter seats and two tables of four

Twenty seats in total: twelve along the counter and two tables of four. There is no separate private room, but the whole shop can be taken privately for up to twenty people, which is a nicer way to do a company dinner than a back room with a curtain.

What is missing matters more than it sounds. No Wi-Fi, no power outlets, and the restaurant is not listed as accessible for wheelchair users. It is a small shop on the first floor of an office building, not a converted house with a ramp.

Smoking is allowed in the evening, and lunch service is non-smoking. I would take the counter if I wanted to watch the batter and hear the fryer, and the tables if I was with a group and did not want to talk across hot oil for two hours.

What a meal costs at Tempura Kanda Honten

Lunch sets from ¥1,050 to ¥1,600

Weekday lunch is the value slot. Six sets run ¥1,050 to ¥1,600 with tax included, and every one of them comes with unlimited refills of rice, miso soup, tsukudani and pickles. The full list of sets is on the restaurant guide page for this address.

The refills are the deal, and they cut both ways. Rice is cheap to make and easy to overeat, which is the whole argument in my rice and portion size piece; and the tsukudani is salty enough that I would read my low-sodium Japanese meal plan before ordering a second bowl.

Lunch runs 11:30 to 14:00 on weekdays with the last order at 13:45, and you cannot book it: lunch is walk-in only. On Saturday, Sunday, public holidays and the evening before a holiday, lunch does not exist at all.

À la carte: the two assortments, anago and oysters

At dinner the menu runs by piece, by assortment and by set. The two house assortments are the easy decision. The silver 銀 (gin) set at ¥1,045 is six pieces: chicken thigh, shrimp, sweetfish, maitake mushrooms, asparagus and onion. The gold 金 (kin) set at ¥1,419 is richer: truffle daikon, pork tenderloin, jumbo shrimp in batter, whole shell-on shrimp and two vegetables. Current prices sit on the menu page.

Then the pieces worth planning around. A whole anago (conger eel) is ¥847, bigger than you expect and the most special thing on the list. Two domestic oysters in tempura with grated daikon ponzu are ¥550, and the ponzu is exactly what they need. Braised beef tendon is ¥660, the only tendon here, as explained earlier.

A light Japanese dinner in Kanda, done properly, is six pieces shared between two and rice afterwards. The silver assortment plus oysters gets you close to that without duplicating the same three items twice.

Dinner sets, two-hour courses and the seasonal board

Dinner sets (夜定食) are ¥2,200 for the seafood set and ¥2,200 for the meat tempura set. They are not all-you-can-eat: each comes with rice, miso soup, pickles and a simmered side dish, which is how a set at this price should work.

The seasonal tempura dish rotates, and the board right now lists taro tempura at ¥550, autumn salmon tempura at ¥935 and assorted mushroom tempura at ¥781. A limited-time Hakata-style chicken hot pot (水炊き mizutaki) is ¥1,800 and is ordered for two people or more. Seasonal plates move between seasons, so I would not build a trip around one particular dish.

Then the drinks. Four courses run two hours of all-you-can-drink, and draught beer is part of the two hours in the ¥5,500 and ¥6,600 courses. If a table only wants a drink, the separate 30-minute plans are ¥550, or ¥770 with draught beer.

And the bill: a seating charge of ¥330 per guest (席料) is added on top of whatever you ordered. That is the number people miss. Typical spend lands between ¥1,000 and ¥1,999 at lunch and ¥4,000 and ¥4,999 at dinner, which tells you the ¥2,200 set is the set route rather than the average bill.

How dinner actually runs

Two sittings and four cut-offs

On weekdays there are two sittings. Lunch is 11:30 to 14:00 with the last order at 13:45. Dinner runs 17:00 to 23:00, with the last food order at 22:00 and the last drink order at 22:30.

Saturday is dinner only, 17:00 to 22:00, last food at 21:00 and last drinks at 21:30, earlier than the weeknight cut-offs, so a Saturday group should arrive hungry rather than late. The day before a public holiday is dinner only too.

Sundays and public holidays the shop is closed, and there are longer closures over New Year, from 28 December to 4 January, plus Obon and Golden Week. The exact dates sit on the shop's calendar and its Instagram feed. That New Year break is what catches people out: a lot of Kanda offices close at the same time, and you end up at the one place that is open when you did not want tempura.

The two-hour all-you-can-drink courses

The course names carry their own price band, so さいとうコース5000 is the ¥5,500 course, a small trap in Japanese because the number in the name is not the number on the bill.

Two hours is the point: long enough to move from food to drinks to more food without a timer running out on you. The 30-minute plans (¥550, ¥770 with draught beer) are the short version for a table that wants a drink and a quick stop. The mizutaki course at ¥5,500 is built around the Hakata-style chicken hot pot the shop also lists separately at ¥1,800 for two or more people.

The pot needs company, so it is not a solo order, and that also rules the course out for a single diner. My arithmetic says a two-hour course at ¥5,500 plus a few plates of tempura is the best-value way to eat here for three or four people, mostly because the drinks stop worrying you.

Paying at the counter

Payment covers more ground than most Tokyo counters. VISA, Mastercard, JCB, American Express and Diners Club cards, the transit IC cards Suica, iD and QUICPay, and the QR codes PayPay, d Barai, Rakuten Pay, au PAY, Alipay and WeChat Pay all work here, as listed in the restaurant's payment details.

Alipay and WeChat Pay in the list is handy if you are travelling from China and would rather not sort out a card. A card issued outside Japan might not pass the terminal, so I would carry yen too rather than find that out at the till. Reservations and questions go to the shop on 03-5207-2789.

Booking Tempura Kanda Honten and the rules that catch people out

Booking channels and the no-show rule

Dinner can be booked online through Tabelog, Gurunavi, Hitosara, AutoReserve and Retty. Three of those five are Japanese-language sites, so for an English-speaking guest the practical channels are Tabelog, AutoReserve or the phone on 03-5207-2789.

Lunch bookings are not accepted at all. The shop does not take a lunch reservation, so a weekday lunch plan is walk-in, and you take a counter seat if one is free.

One rule is worth knowing: a reserved table is treated as cancelled if the restaurant hears nothing from you after the booked time. That phone call is the difference between keeping a counter seat and losing it, which is why I would book by phone on a first visit.

What to know before you arrive

The Japanese holiday calendar reorganises the week more than a European one. Closed Sundays and public holidays, dinner-only on the eve of a public holiday, dinner-only on Saturday with the earlier cut-offs, plus New Year, Obon and Golden Week closures. Any of those can move a plan.

The room rules out a few kinds of visit. Twenty seats, no Wi-Fi, no outlets, and listed as not accessible for wheelchair users: this is not a place to sit with a laptop for four hours, and one to ask about before you bring a guest who uses a chair.

Evenings allow smoking; lunch does not. And I would call 03-5207-2789 before a first visit, mostly to ask whether the staff speak English and whether there is an English menu. I have no idea, and guessing at a counter in Kanda is not my idea of a good evening.

Five ordering mistakes to avoid

1. Ordering a tendon rice bowl. There is none: the only tendon dish is braised beef tendon 牛すじ煮込み at ¥660, and it comes as a side.
2. Expecting a summer plate. The seasonal board rotates, and the current items are taro ¥550, autumn salmon ¥935 and assorted mushroom ¥781.
3. Treating the ¥330 as the whole bill. It is a per-guest seating charge on top of the food, and the chikuwa plate arrives as well.
4. Arriving at 22:00 with a group. Food orders close at 22:00 on weekdays and 21:00 on Saturdays, and the mizutaki pot needs two people.
5. Going on a Sunday, or in the last week of December.

Two of those deserve a minute. If you are two people, order across tiers instead of doubling a full assortment: the silver set is six pieces and single pieces are priced one by one, so a table can build its own plate and share it. And the cut-offs are not negotiable in a friendly way, because after 22:00 the food list closes however long you want to stay for drinks.

Who should eat at Tempura Kanda Honten

Who it suits, who should skip it

This suits a solo diner or a pair who wants counter-side tempura, fried to order and handed over piece by piece in house-thinned batter. It suits a Kanda office worker at lunch: sets from ¥1,050 to ¥1,600 with unlimited rice, miso, tsukudani and pickles, served fast enough to leave an hour at the desk. It suits anyone planning a long drinking session, since the courses hold two hours of drinks with food alongside.

Skip it if you came for a tendon bowl, if you need step-free access, Wi-Fi or somewhere to charge a phone, or if you are a group of eight expecting a private room. There is none, though the whole shop can be taken for up to twenty people. Skip Sunday, and skip the New Year, Obon and Golden Week closures. Skip a table that expects to order at 22:00, and skip a solo dinner if the mizutaki hot pot is the plan. If a per-guest seating charge bothers you, or you cannot sit next to smokers in the evening, this is not your room either.

The verdict

This is a working tempura counter: three tiers priced by the piece from ¥209, two house assortments at ¥1,045 and ¥1,419, a ¥2,200 dinner set with rice, miso and a simmered side, and food that arrives hot and in order. The weaknesses are just as clear, with twenty seats in total, no lunch bookings, a ¥330 per-guest seating charge and no tendon bowl anywhere on the menu.

For the cheapest possible visit, count a ¥209 ume-tier piece and the ¥330 per-guest seating charge as two separate lines, which is how the bill is built. My verdict: a good Kanda tempura counter for early dinners, not an all-night one. If you want the last piece of your set at 22:15, look elsewhere.

Quick answers

• Is there a tendon rice bowl? No. The only tendon dish is braised beef tendon at ¥660, served as a side.
• Can I book lunch? No, lunch bookings are not accepted. Dinner books online via Tabelog and AutoReserve, or on 03-5207-2789.
• When is the last order? 13:45 at weekday lunch, 22:00 for food on weekday dinner, 21:00 on Saturday. Drinks close at 22:30 and 21:30.
• What does a meal cost? Lunch sets ¥1,050–¥1,600, dinner sets ¥2,200, two-hour drink courses ¥4,950–¥6,600, plus ¥330 per guest for the seating charge.
• When is it closed? Sundays and public holidays, no lunch on the eve of a public holiday, and longer breaks over New Year, Obon and Golden Week.

Five things to sort out before you go

• Call 03-5207-2789 and ask whether the staff speak English and whether there is an English menu.
• Carry yen in cash: the listed payment methods cover cards, IC cards and QR codes, and a card issued outside Japan might not pass the terminal.
• Check the shop's calendar for the exact New Year, Obon and Golden Week closure dates.
• Arrive before the cut-offs: 13:45 at lunch, 22:00 for food on a weeknight, 21:00 on Saturday.
• Ask what the ¥330 seating charge (席料) covers on the night; the chikuwa plate is billed as a seating fee.