The other day, I visited Musashi Koyama shopping street, in Shinagawa Ward of Tokyo. This is a long covered shopping street with many restaurants, shops, and cafes, and is maybe one of my favorite shopping streets in Tokyo. It kind of reminds me of the big shopping streets of Osaka, but at least for this one, I do not need to take the bullet train to visit.

As I was walking down the shopping street while checking the shops, I was surprised to hear somebody call my name. It was a friend from tennis who happened to live in the neighborhood. I told her I was looking for a place to eat, and she recommended this tempura place. I did remember passing by a tempura place with several people waiting outside, and definitely that was the one she was referring to. I told her I would just finish my walk to the end of the shopping street and decide where to eat on my way back.

In the end, I ended up lining up for that tempura place. A recommendation from somebody who lives in the neighborhood is hard to ignore. Add to that many locals are waiting outside, so I had to go to this shop. I wrote my name on the paper outside the shop and waited only about 20 minutes for my turn.

The place is called Makino, and they offer several tempura set meals which would contain a different set of tempura and would range from about ¥1200 to maybe around ¥2000. I was directed to one of the counter chairs on the second floor and was initially given the menu, already opened up to the English pages. For restaurants, I actually now prefer the Japanese menus, so I just looked for the Japanese pages.

As I usually do when I visit a new place, I ordered the most basic set meal, which is shown most prominently on the menu. If I like it and if I do come back, that’s when I will try to explore the other options. I did get the extra “tamagoten” or half-boiled egg tempura, as that one seems to be one of the shop’s more popular tempuras.

One thing I like about this place is that they would serve the tempura in batches, making sure you eat them freshly cooked. First, they served the shrimp, the squid, and the sweet potatoes. Afterwards, they brought in the half-boiled eggs, along with the chicken and the whiting fish. They finished it off with the maitake mushrooms.

All of them were delicious, and I would definitely come back again. I also added it to my favorites list on my Apple Maps. I would say my favorite is the half-boiled egg tempura, though all of them were really good. It will be tough to go back to Tenya after this.

The next day, I decided to bring my wife for lunch to the same store.

She loved it too!