Akimitsu Tendon at VivoCity

Akimitsu is a new Japanese restaurant at VivoCity, which claims to be the original inventor of Tendon in Tokyo's Asakusa area.  What is tendon?  Tendon, I guess, is a Japanese word by combining "Ten" in tempura, and "don", which is the Japanese word for rice bowl, or rice pot.  Tendon in this case means tempura on rice. 

I first visited this place on a Friday evening, a long queue at the entrance, so I decided to come again on a Monday evening.  Luckily this time there was no queue, and we were ushered in swiftly. 

The place is not very big and all the tables are crammed together, leaving little privacy between tables.  Whatever your conversation is, you must be ready to share it with the people on the next table. 

There were two plastic boxes on the table, one contains preserved cabbage, the other preserved bean sprouts.  You can have a free flow of these two side dishes.  The bean sprouts were too salty for my taste.  The cabbage was not bad.  My friend and I munched quite a bit of the cabbage before our food arrived. 

Signature Don, $14.90

I ordered their signature don.  It consists of prawn, fish, long bean, mushroom, carrot, and egg.  Of course, all the tempura are put in a rice bowl, on top of the rice.  When we ordered, we were also asked what kind of tempura sauce we would like, but when the food came, there was no sauce.  Puzzled, we asked the staff, the reply was the sauce was already in the rice.  If we would like to have extra sauce, we could help ourselves to the tendon sauce bottle on the table.  Beside the tendon, the meal also came with a small portion of steamed egg and a bowl of miso soup. 

I am not an expert on tempura, especially how to tell whether it is good or bad.  The tempura here is not extremely crispy, but acceptable.  The outside appeared to be still quite oily.  For the health-conscious, this may not be a very good choice.  In terms of taste, for my untrained palates, I could only tell the flavor from the tendon sauce. 

The portion was reasonable, enough to feed a guy and fill his stomach.