Tendon Kohaku Chinatown Point 天丼琥珀 (Rebranded as "琥珀茶房 Kohaku Sabou)

Tendon Kohaku Chinatown Point (天丼琥珀) is one of several branches of the tempura restaurant that have opened in Singapore after the successful debut of the first one in Suntec City in 2016. Good Japanese restaurants are always popular in Singapore, especially when they are affordably priced. I can remember we had to brave the queue to try the tendon bowls when the Suntec outlet first opened (see post).

There are several Japanese restaurants on level 2 of Chinatown Point. Tendon Kohaku Chinatown Point is one of them. It has the practical, simple layout of a traditional Japanese restaurant. We were there during the cautious 2019-nCoV period, business was fairly muted.

Tendon Kohaku Chinatown Point Menu

Here are pictures of the menu at Tendon Kohaku Chinatown Point. It is a simple menu. The main decisions one has to make are whether to have the regular or the vegetable tendon, the type of sauce and whether to upsize. We learnt from previous experience that the regular portions are generous. No upsizing, whether by adding rice or udon was necessary. We ended up with the regular tendon ($15 each), but in each of the three sauces – original, spicy and wasabi. The latter is said to be exclusive to the Chinatown outlet. There is a more upmarket seasonal tendon available ($23) which has all kinds of delicious things like ikura and sea urchin. We may order that the next time we feel rich or very hungry.

The Tempura Tendon

I am afraid our pictures are quite boring today. The three types of tendon we ordered look the same. If you examine them close enough, the one with wasabi sauce has a blob of wasabi at the edge of the bowl. The other two look indistinguishable.

I thought that the spicy sauce was rather spicy. The original sauce is the sweetish sauce that we normally associate with tendon. The wasabi sauce version is similar to the original sauce version, but with the additional blob of mild wasabi on the side. My favourite is the wasabi version – one can eat it with or without the wasabi to have a range of flavours.

The tendon at Kohaku was still good, but I thought they were nicer when we first tasted them at Suntec. The prawns tasted better and the batter was more fluffy. What has not changed is the quantity of the food. In addition to the prawns, there are various pieces of vegetable tempura and a large piece of chicken as toppings. These have to be moved over to the extra bowl provided to reach the rice underneath. At $15 per bowl it is still good value for money.