don't get your tempura wet!

in writing this blog I have been constantly praising japanese food. it's always fresh, healthy, rarely hyper-caloric, delicious, rich of surprises and of funny new ingredients for us foreigners. but not every oyster comes with a pearl...

tonight I experienced what I consider a major fault (the first one I see, indeed) of japanese cuisine. it's called tempura soba.
I got out of my lab at about 8PM, really tired. I wanted to go to Shibuya to have a fancy dinner, but was toooo tired. so I stopped at the little soba-ya restaurant right next to the campus gate, where I had already had dinner a couple of times before. I wanted something very warm, to beat the cold, and something crispy and tasty.
perfect combination: I decided to order a soba and some tempura.
but be careful, Jerry... if you order tempura soba, what you get is your steaming hot bowl of soba noodles in their delicious broth, with tempura on top!!

now, come on!, I am from Rome, Italy, a place where fried food is probably the best in the world. yes, ma'am. there is no fried cod, no french fries, no bananas fritas, that can top the taste of a filetto di baccalà, fiore di zucca coll'alici, supplì al telefono, carciofo alla giudia, deep fried to the right temperature and served hot and crispy! that's what fried food is supposed to be: hot and crispy (*).
now, can you imagine what happens when your tasty and crispy tempura is abandoned to float on a boiling broth?? you are right... it gets wet! awful! blasphemy! sacrilège!
not only wet, but the thick batter of the tempura is raised at a volcanic temperature! (it reminds me of Fantozzi's adventure with hot saké... but only italian readers will understand this one :)

I discovered only later that you should rather order tenzaru soba, that is soba noodles and tempura in two separate dishes. the downside is that in this case you will get cold noodles (supposedly better than the hot ones, since the hot broth alters the taste of the buckwheat). however, I wanted hot soba, and hot (and crispy) tempura. why shouldn't be that an option? or maybe I should change restaurant...???
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(*) this is a note for all those of you who love to squirt lemon juice on your fried food. aaarrghhh! you get pretty much the same blasphemous result (however without the heat!). the only acceptable instance in which lemon juice can be sprinkled, is the cotoletta alla milanese (which is called wiener schnitzel in the rest of Europe).
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highlight of the day: I found the wonderful Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AI-s lens, at Fuji-ya Camera in Nakano, for just 13,500 Yen! on ebay it sells for about twice this price... a great prime lens from the 80's, it is one of the few Nikkors to beat the corresponding modern auto-focus-super-duper version (notably, the recent AF28/2.8 sells for a price about 30% smaller). I am happy!