The Asakusa Tendon Shop That's Open Three and a Half Hours a Day

Five minutes on foot from Asakusa Station in Tokyo, down a lane behind the Shin-Nakamise shopping arcade, there is a small tempura shop called Masaru. It opened in 1947.

It serves from 11:00 to 14:30 — and closes earlier if the ingredients run out, which they often do. The shop is open for three and a half hours a day. It closes on Wednesdays, and without warning on days when the fish doesn't come together.

That last part is not a figure of speech. The third-generation owner, packing that morning's delivery in ice, put it this way:

It's honestly a kind of miracle when the fish all comes together.

What tendon actually is

If you have eaten tempura outside Japan, you have probably had it as a plated course: a few pieces of battered seafood and vegetables, with a dipping sauce on the side.

Tendon (天丼) is the everyday form — tempura piled on a bowl of rice, with a soy-and-dashi sauce poured over the top so it soaks into the grains. Edomae means Tokyo-style, in the tradition of the fish caught in the bay in front of old Edo.

It is lunch, not a tasting menu. Which is why almost everything at Masaru is decided by two things: what came off the truck from the fish market that morning, and how the rice behaves under the sauce.

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The shop is named after a grandmother

The owner is 41, born and raised in Asakusa. Asked where the name came from, he answers plainly:

Masaru — that's my grandmother's name.

She opened it during the postwar rebuilding of Tokyo, first as a small koryori-ya, a neighbourhood restaurant serving little dishes. The tempura and the tendon were what people came back for, so it became a tendon shop. That was three generations ago.

Asked whether he chose this work because he liked it, he gives an answer that explains a lot about the place:

It's hard, but I do like the work. I grew up watching my parents do it, so it seemed normal. If your parents play sports, playing sports is normal — "why wouldn't you?" It was like that. … Then you take it over and do it yourself, and you find out how hard it actually is.

7:00 — the day starts with rice

At seven in the morning he unlocks, turns on the lights, and starts with the rice.

It is Sasanishiki from Miyagi Prefecture, an older variety that most restaurants abandoned decades ago for stickier, sweeter rice. The reason is the sauce:

If you think about how it takes the sauce, Sasanishiki is better.

And he does not wash it the way rice is normally washed in Japan — no hands in the bowl, no scrubbing.

I never put my hands in and scrub it. Sasanishiki breaks easily. If you scrub it, the grains crack. It's already milled very cleanly, so all I'm doing is rinsing the bran off the surface.

He is not precious about knowing best:

Fish, rice — whatever it is, I make a point of listening to the people who do it for a living.

The sauce starts from kaeshi: soy sauce and mirin combined, then let down with dashi and reduced with a second addition of bonito flakes.

The dashi and the kaeshi are still separate at this point, so you boil it and keep concentrating it down.

7:15 — the fish arrives from Toyosu

Nearly four hours before opening, styrofoam boxes arrive from Toyosu, Tokyo's wholesale fish market. What is inside changes daily: conger eel, clams, live tiger prawns, whiting, flathead.

The prawns come in alive. The colour of the shell, he explains, is the colour of the sand they grew up in.

This time of year it's mostly Aichi, and Kyushu — Kagoshima. Prawns come round in a cycle; there are about two seasons. For tempura, June is good. … Winter is good too, deep winter. So it's a fine time to eat tendon.

Conger eel he judges by light:

See how it shines gold? That's the fat. It goes translucent — look, you can see through it.

But a full set of fish is not something he can count on.

It's a strange thing. When the customers come, there's no fish. And when the fish all comes together, there are no customers.

Hence the notice on the shop: closed Wednesdays, and closed without warning when the delivery doesn't come together.

Prep is mostly subtraction

Watching the morning, most of the labour is not adding anything. It is taking things away.

Whiting — scaled, head and guts removed. What it goes into is not fresh water but iced salt water.

If you put fish in plain water it clouds up straight away. To keep it fresh you want to soak it in salt water, even a weak one.

Flathead — a bottom fish with no scales; it protects itself with slime instead. Salt is rubbed in, the slime is rinsed off, and the fish is patted dry with paper. It is the owner's own favourite.

It has more flavour. You'll know when you eat it.

Tiger prawns — killed before shelling, and for a specific reason.

They peel because they've been killed first. If you peel one that was alive a second ago, the meat sticks to the shell.

Only the tip of the head is trimmed, so it doesn't burst in the hot oil. That is why the prawn heads here are served whole, and eaten.

One oil, two pots

There are two tempura pots on the range. The oil in them is the same oil.

Same oil. The pots just look different. The temperatures are different. This one puts the makeup on — the "makeup oil". This one finishes it — the "finishing oil". But the oil is the same.

"Makeup" means the batter.

The batter won't take at a low temperature. You go in hot, and that's when it puts its makeup on.

Conger eel and flathead get their batter in the hot pot and are moved across to finish. Tiger prawn and scallop, which cook fast, go in last and quickly.

The batter is never stirred

Flour is sifted into a bowl of iced water — and then he stops.

I'm not mixing it. I'm just letting the flour sink. If you go at it, it turns gluey.

With the batter made, he puts his hands together at the shop's small shrine. It has been there since the previous generation, and the gesture happens every morning.

11:00 open, 14:30 done

There is already a line in the lane before opening. He carries the sandwich board out to the street and adds an arrow so people can find the turn. At eleven the doors open. The seats fill immediately.

I'm grateful. It means I have to do the job properly.

The menu is short.

On doing the same thing every day, he says one sentence:

Doing the same thing every day is hard. But doing it is the job.

The bowl

The ¥3,800 bowl carries five kinds of seafood and an aubergine: tiger prawn, the prawn's head, conger eel, flathead, and scallop from Funka Bay in Hokkaido.

The bowl itself is warmed with hot water first. Rice goes in, then each piece as it comes out of the oil. Only the aubergine is dipped through the sauce before it lands. Sauce over the top, the rim wiped clean, a lid set on at an angle, and out it goes.

The conger eel is heavy enough that the lid does not close. The batter is light; the flesh is fragrant. The scallop gets sweeter the longer you chew. And the prawn head is eaten whole.

We use the prawns live, so you can eat it.

The miso soup is made with miso from Nikko, bonito dashi and nothing else, with tofu and mitsuba.

On the day filmed, the customers included a mother and daughter from Saitama, a couple on their first visit, three young men from Yokohama whose father works in Tokyo and told them to come, and a tourist from London, who left saying:

The sauce on the rice was lovely. I couldn't eat anymore, I was too full.

14:30 — until the ingredients run out

At half past two the day's ingredients are gone and service ends. A wooden sign goes up by the door: the ingredients are finished; today's service is over.

Asked what he wants the shop to become, he does not reach for anything grand.

We'll keep the shop going as it is. I just want to keep getting better at it.

We make the tendon with whatever fish came in that day. Please come and try it.

If you're going

Prices and hours are as filmed. Because closures depend on the delivery, it is worth checking before you go.

A note on etiquette: it is a small room, the queue starts before opening, and the kitchen is two people. Order, eat, pay, leave.

The part text can't carry

Everything above is the reporting. What it leaves out is the timing.

With every seat full, he works between the two pots — battering in the hot one, moving pieces across to the cooler one, judging each by sound — while his wife sets the bowls and fills the rice so that each piece lands the moment it leaves the oil.

That is the 19:11 mark onward. And at 24:17 the ¥5,800 bowl comes out.