The most popular tempura restaurant in Tokyo right now isn't "Mikawa Zezankyo" or "Tempura Motoyoshi," but rather this very "Takiya."

Takiya's owner is the 42-year-old Tatsuaki Kasamoto.
He is an elite chef who, after honing his skills at "Kitcho" in Osaka, moved to the "Ritz Carlton Tokyo," where he served as the head chef of the attached Japanese restaurant "Hinokizaka" for a long period of time.

Among the various types of Japanese dishes that exist, tempura is regarded as the most conservative.
No matter where you go for tempura, you'll find they use fragrant sesame oil for frying.
Your course starts with shrimp, followed by seafood and vegetables, and then finishes with kakiage (mixed tempura).
Kasamoto brought a breath of fresh air into the very straightforward and restrictive world of tempura with his quality ingredients and use of safflower oil.
"Traditionally tempura is fried in sesame oil, but I want for people to be able to enjoy the aromas of the ingredients themselves, so I use pressed safflower oil, which has very little aroma. It makes for a lighter texture and isn't as oily, right?" laughed Kasamoto confidently from behind the counter.

Truffle, caviar, wagyu beef, cheese....
Kasamoto uses these sorts of original ingredients and cooking techniques, unthinkable in the world of traditional tempura, pioneering a new type of delicious tempura.

He wraps wagyu beef Chateaubriand, particularly prized even among fillet cuts, with perilla leaf before frying to trap in the juices.
When you put a piece of the lightly-coated meat into your mouth, you're overcome with a deep and rounded umami that you can't get from seared meat.
With the truffle salt provided alongside the beef, the dish's flavors become even deeper, making it taste almost like French cuisine.

Unique among tempura chefs, Kasamoto, who is well-versed in Japanese cooking techniques, also is ingenious in building the composition of his omakase course.
During a certain day's dinner course, he may follow up fresh Japanese lobster sashimi with some prepared as tempura.
This allows guests to enjoy the differences in sweetness and textures depending on how the ingredient is prepared.
When I said "The sweetness of the lobster really stands out when it's cooked," Kasamoto earnestly replied, "I'm not trying to just fry up unusual ingredients. Rather, I'm looking for ingredients that are improved when they're used in tempura and thinking of how best to fry them."

Kasamoto also visits a variety of restaurants, like sushi, yakiniku, and kappo establishments, on his days off.
I'm truly looking forward to seeing how Kasamoto will expand the possibilities and appeals of tempura from here on out now that he has his own restaurant and is fully developed as a chef.

I'll be coming back regularly to try a variety of seasonal ingredients, like bamboo shoots and mountain vegetables in the spring, ayu in the summer, matsutake mushrooms in autumn, and crab in the winter.