Tendon is my favourite food.  Maybe Tendon or Tempura is in the top 3 popular food for foreigners too among Japanese foods.

Tendon means Tempura and rice dish.  Don means a bowl in Japanese, so the meaning of Tendon is translated such.  For detail of meaning of DON, please check Katsudon explanation.

Tendon’s Ten means Tempura’s Tem (ten). Don is a shortcut of Donburi, which means a bowl.  As such, in Japanese there are some bowl dish.

Among the bowl dish, tendon and katsudon are competing the top popularity for each other in Japan, I think. Tendon used to be a rich person’s food rather than a average people’s food. But recently cheap Tendon Restaurants are found in big cities like Tokyo.  Don’t underestimate them, the taste is OK  in spite of the low price.

Low price tendon starts from 500 yen. If it’s higher, the price is over 3000 yen a bowl.  Usually traditional restaurants with a long hisotry is popular and its taste is very good although price is high.

Tendon usually uses shrimps or prawns, vegetables, fish, and squid for it’s tempura. The tempura is on the rice in the bowl. Sweet Teriyaki style soy sauce is put over tempura and rice.  Cooking is simple as other Japanese food. 

But choosing a good restaurant is very important,too.   Tempura is a simple cooking but it requires technique to become someone as a professional chef. Some say it needs more than 10 years to be someone in Tempura restaurants.

It’s also true that Japanese food is easy to cook for anybody. But just like Sushi or Tempura, it’s really difficult to realize good taste with simple stuff and cooking. It depends on the chef’s technique and cooking sense.

For example, please try Sushi or Tempura.  They look easy to cook. But you will find the taste is really different if a good chef cooks them.