Dinner at the Elusive Tempura Hajime in Melbourne

One of our strangest, but very good, dining experiences also happened in Melbourne. Shweetie heard about this exclusive little place that did a tasting menu of nothing but tempura, so we decided we needed to check it out. He'd also heard that it was "a little hard to find." Yeah, they're not kidding.

Good thing we had the restaurant's address, since there's no external sign and the windows (except for the one on the door) were all blocked off:

You had to peer through the window on the unmarked door to see the little 6"x6" sign:

Once inside, the restaurant lobby looked like a small hotel lobby, with a desk and couch, and decorated in all dark wood and rich fabric. The dining room was in the adjoining room, and was set up like a sushi bar with twelve seats. The chef was cooking up tempura right in front of us on the two burners behind the bar:

We started with an hors d'oeuvre and sashimi.

Kobachi


Gurnard, kingfish, and ocean trout sashimi

And THEN came the tempura!

Prawn


Asparagus


Sea urchin stuffed scallop


Sweet potato


Chicken stuffed mushroom


King George whiting fish


Shrimp stuffed eggplant


Unagi


John Dory fish


Oyster


Mixed vegetables and seafood over rice

After all of that tempura, came our refreshing dessert.

Yogurt panna cotta with fruit

Despite all of the fried food, we didn't leave the place feeling like we'd just taken an oil bath. The tempura was light and non-greasy, and none of the food was overly coated. It was really quite good, and I'd recommend it, not just for the food, but also for the experience. I mean, how often can you get a tasting menu of tempura?!

The staff was also really attentive, but non-invasive. Amusingly, the nicest thing they did was actually after our meal. When we were leaving, we opened the door to find that it was raining. We'd carried around our umbrella all day, but forgotten to bring it to dinner. Great. The staff offered to call a taxi for us, but we were planning to take the tram home, since we already had tram passes and were too cheap to take a taxi. We decided to wait around for a little while, hoping the rain would taper off, but it was still pouring five minutes later. One of the waitresses came out from the back with a humungous umbrella, and insisted we take it. We protested, but she told us, "A customer left this here after his meal. That was three years ago, so I don't think he's going to come back for it." So we took the golf-sized Park Hyatt umbrella with us. When we got back to Fountain Terrace, we left it in the umbrella stand by the front door. I wonder what the owners will think when they discover it, since we didn't tell them we'd left it there. Oh well!