When I landed on Fukuoka airport at 10 a.m., and went straight to Tempura Hirao Honten (天麩羅処ひらお本店). It takes about 20 minutes walk from the airport. They are so popular tempura shop serving freshly cooked tempura by one piece at inexpensive price. But my target was not tempura. My target was… free shiokara :p
Shiokara is salted squids. We can enjoy their salted squids as we want. But to my sad, they temporarily limit serving shiokara from this June because of lack of the amount of squids. We can have only one dish.
This was still 10:30 a.m. just after the opening time. Though it was Saturday, I thought there are some vacant seats. But I found there were about 15 people waiting outside. And more when I entered the shop, I found about 20 people was waiting along the wall :p But basically, tempura is served quickly and people only eat without chatting, so, we don’t have to wait so much.
There’s a door along the road, but it’s for exit only. The entrance is faced on the parking lot.
There are two ticket vending machine. “小めし” is normal amount of rice, and “中めし” is large helping. Tempura set cost only 760 yen. Inexpensive.
They sell salted squid at the vending machine outside.
Inside of the shop is large. All seats are counter seats surrounding the kitchen. There are two kitchens. After they cook, they put tempura on our each tray.
I was seated and handed the ticket to the staff in front of me. And then the staff served everything except tempura. Sauce for tempura, miso soup, rice. And salted squid.
The salted squid had crunchy texture and it don’t have much salt. It was seasoned with yuzu citrus. It had refreshing tastes. Though tempura wasn’t served yet, I started to eat rice with the squids. And I had second helping of salted squid. By the way, the rice is served in such a small bowl, but it had much rice. So, it was enough for me.
Tempura set have 7 tempura. Tempura was served by one piece just after cooked. From left, eggplant, sweet potato, and mackerel. Those weren’t oily and those coating was crisp. the sweet potato was sweet ! And also the mackerel was good.
And white fish (it’s like chicken) and sandborer.
And sweet pepper. Last, squid was served. Squid was awesome all the same.
This sauce was based on soy sauce. It went with rice very well. Not only salted squids but also those tempura was delicious :p I was really satisfied. When I got out of the shop, I found there were about 80 people waiting….Oh…
About
Name Tempura Hirao Main Store (天麩羅処ひらお 本店)
Open Day through night
Reservation Unavailable
Credit card Unavailable
URL Website
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