Hannosuke Now Offers Chicken and Crispier Tempura

It was inevitable. Because even in the most Japanese of Japanese food courts, man cannot live on seafood and vegetables alone. In L.A., there has to be chicken. Because even though Hannosuke, the tempura specialist in West L.A.’s Mitsuwa Market, added a vegetable tempura bowl earlier in the year you knew the menu wasn’t going to be complete until chicken made an appearance. And sure enough there it was on my visit yesterday: chicken tempura. But the joke’s on you Los Angeles chicken lovers! Check out the big surprise after the jump…

Ok, maybe it’s not such a huge surprise to anybody who’s ever had Japanese kara-age but it’s dark meat chicken! After all, somebody has to use the dark meat part of all those chickens that go to make grilled chicken breast sandwiches topped with avocado.  And if you like Japanese kara-age, you’ll likely enjoy the moist, peppery patty of deep fried chicken thigh that comes nestled inside the standard collection of tempura at Hannosuke (shrimp, nori, kakiage, shishito, sweet potato, and that delicious tempura poached egg.)  Better than the whole eel?  Of course not.  But, like I said.  You gotta have chicken.

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The bigger news at Hannosuke is that you can now order tempura plates.  So for all those who complained that the ten-don ended up making the tempura a bit too soggy, you can now order any bowl as a plate.  Same amount of food, same price, but deconstructed for maximum crunchiness in every bite.  Personally, I find something incredibly comforting about eating the ten-don, the tempura batter slowly degrading as the egg yolk, sauce, and steam from the rice mount their assault on crunch.  A giant mass of deep fried goodness, that somehow ends up making sense when it all gets put together.  I think about that bowl… a lot. It’s even good with chicken.

Hannosuke in the Mitsuwa Marketplace Food Court, 3760 S Centinela Ave. 310-397-4676

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