Tenkadori Subiaco

Posted April 16th, 2010 in Eat Out in Perth - Japanese Food - No Comments »

While Tenkadori has 60 stores across Japan, the Subiaco store is the very first
overseas, and they use quality products produced in Australia including free-range chicken. I took my friend to this place on Friday night for a drink and yakitori 😀

I made a booking just in case, but there were few empty tables inside. The owner (whom I spoke on the phone to make a booking) prepared a window-side table for us 🙂 The place was little small, but enough to enjoy drinks and tapas! The staff were very friendly.

Unfortunately I had a big lunch on the day, so I wasn’t really hungry. So was my friend. We started with edamame, assorted 7 kinds of yakitori plate, and tofu salad. You can also order small dish of a la carte menu such as tsukune (skewered chicken meatball), mushroom, tebasaki (chicken wings) and ika no ichiyaboshi (semi-dried squid – a typical food to be eaten with sake, sho-chu and beer in Japan). We weren’t sure if we could eat some of their main meal such as teriyaki plates and oyako-donburi, those 3 dishes we ordered seemed pretty enough for us.

Assorted 7 kinds of yakitori plate wasn’t all “yakitori”, as it contained sauteed mushroom and okura (not skewered), and the tebasaki (chicken wing) was deep-fried, not grilled. Well, I thought the dish got good variety , and they’re delicious. You can chose your yakitori to be grilled with either “sauce” or “shio (salt)”. Although many people would go with “sauce” ( I assume), I prefer the following combination:

Yakitori (skewered pieces of chicken thigh) = shio
Tsukune (skewered chicken meatball) = sauce
Kawa (chicken skin) = shio (not available at Tenkadori)
Nankotsu (chicken cartilage)= shio (not available at Tenkadori)
Negima (skewered pieces of chicken thigh and springonion)= sauce (not available at Tenkadori)
Tebasaki (chicken wing) = shio

I thought it would be nice if they had some light meals on their menu such as “ocha-zuke” (a dish in which hot tea is poured over cooked white rice topped with a few simple ingredients. It is a deceptively simple yet extremely tasty), soba noodle (either cold or hot) and yaki-onigiri (grilled rice ball brushed with soy-based tasty sauce).

Their lunch menu seems to be different from the dinner menu, so I would like to come back here during the day next time 🙂

(browse here for the conversation between kind viewers and Ume about this place)