Tendon Kohaku: Japanese tempura bowls in Burnaby

Tendon Kohaku is a collaboration project between two giant Japanese food corporations – Nadai Fujisoba (the largest soba chain in Japan) and Kings Know Group who owns a variety of restaurant brand in Japan including Tendon, pizzeria, pasta café, Japanese Izakaya, lemonade shop, etc. They offer Japanese tempura bowls and have 2 locations – one in Burnaby and one in downtown Vancouver.

This review is based on an in-dining experience at the Burnaby location.

Interior

The Burnaby location is just a few minutes walk from the Amazing Brentwood mall. They have a free parkade where you can park. We put our names on the online waitlist and see there are 17 tables ahead of us. We wait 1 hour and ask the hostess how much longer we need to wait. She seats us immediately and tells us there is some sort of error with their online system. Essentially, even if your table is ready, you wouldn’t have received your text message. I feel like if we didn’t ask, we would have never been seated, which is an issue. If they had noticed their online waiting system is not working, they should have done something about it. There were still lots of people waiting outside the restaurant, who probably are also all on the waitlist and have no idea it’s not even working.

The interior is very beautiful with warm lighting and wooden accents. They really emphasize rice through their decor from the wheat on the roof to the rice you’ll find around the seating booths. Seats were comfortable and tables were not too small.

Food

All of the bowls come with a miso soup and pickled ginger. I don’t have much to say except that the bowls are really pretty. The miso soup and pickled ginger are pretty average.

Anago Tendon ($21)

This is their signature bowl and has everything. It comes with rice, Kohaku Tendon Sauce, 1 anago (Eel Fish), 2 prawns, 1 chicken,  2 French beans, 1 shiitake mushroom, 1 lotus root and 1 soft fried egg. Everything is battered and deep fried.

This is a lot of food but I did mostly finish it. I wasn’t able to eat all of the rice though. The eel fish was really interesting and long. Everything tasted yummy but also similar because they are all battered and fried and using the same sauce. I like the prawns, anago, mushroom and lotus root. I also thought the egg was a nice touch because you can mix the yolk with the sauce and I feel like it’s difficult to deep fry a soft egg like this.

Sashimi Aimori Tendon ($19) and Vegetable Tendon ($15)

The sashimi aimori tendon comes with rice, Kohaku tendon sauce, 2 prawns, 1 chicken, 1 kabocha pumpkin, 2 French beans, Kaisen sauce, tuna, salmon, scallop, ikura (salmon roe), sesame seed, green onion, cucumber and wasabi. This one offers a bit more variety because of the sashimi aspect and you can get a break from all the deep-friedness of the bowl.

The vegetable tendon

Rice Kohaku comes with 1 kabocha pumpkin, 1 seaweed, 1 green bean, 1 shiitake mushroom, 1 lotus root, 1 enoki mushroom, 1 yam, 1 baby corn, and 1 shishitou pepper.

Ikura handroll ($7)

My boyfriend adds this ikura handroll and every time it’s presented like this I always have a hard time eating it without the filling coming out lol. Pretty standard ikura roll but they give you quite a lot of ikura, which is nice.

Hokkaido milk tea ($7) and organic Kyoto matcha latte ($8)

The Hokkaido milk tea is freshly brewed with 100% organic black tea. The matcha latte is made with 100% premium Organic matcha powder. I thought the packaging these drinks came in were quite interesting because it’s almost like it’s in a can.

My mom really liked the matcha latte and didn’t find it too sweet.

Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I enjoyed my dinner at Kohaku Tendon. I felt like the anago tendon was a bit too much for me but as a first timer customer, I felt like it was the best choice in order to taste everything. Next time I will probably be getting the sashimi tendon or the seafood tendon as it doesn’t have as much food in it.

I’m a lover of deep fried foods and I didn’t find anything too greasy. The batter is not crunchy as the sauce kind of dampens it, but it’s really nice when paired with rice. Without rice, the flavour might be too strong. My mom found the meal to be a bit too heavy because of the amount of deep-fried items.

Aside from the mishap in waitlist which dampened my thoughts on service, the rest of the service was excellent.

In general, I think Kohaku Tendon is definitely worth trying once if you don’t mind the wait. Prices are not that bad for the amount of food you get. I wouldn’t go regularly due to the long wait but maybe when the hype dies down, this could be a good lunch spot.

Sincerely, Loewe