Savor Scout › Food guides › Tempura
How to find good tempura
Tempura should be light, lacy and almost transparent — a thin coat that shows the ingredient underneath. It is one of the hardest Japanese dishes to do well, and very easy to do badly.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Thin, lacy batter — Cold batter mixed just before frying. Thick, bready coats are wrong.
- Clean oil — Fresh oil makes light, pale-gold tempura. Old oil makes it dark and heavy.
- Fried and served immediately — At a tempura counter, pieces come one at a time from the fryer to your plate.
- Seasonal vegetables — Shiso, lotus root, sweet potato, kabocha, mushrooms. Variety shows a serious kitchen.
- Tentsuyu and salt — A dashi dipping sauce with grated daikon, or simply salt and lemon.
What to order
- Mixed tempura — Shrimp and seasonal vegetables.
- Tendon — Tempura over rice with a sweet sauce.
- Tempura soba or udon — In hot broth.
- Kakiage — A fritter of mixed vegetables and shrimp.
- Omakase at a tempura counter — If you find one.
Where to find Tempura
Tempura is mostly found at Japanese restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 13,468 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 528 Los Angeles, CA 274 San Francisco, CA 192 Honolulu, HI 192 Las Vegas, NV 148 Seattle, WA 122 Chicago, IL 121 San Diego, CA 94
Campuses with the most within a mile
NYU 176 Touro University 163 The Graduate Center 163 Baruch 162 New School University 154 FIT 132
A few to start with
- icca — New York, NY
20 Warren St, New York - Azay — Los Angeles, CA
226 1st St, Los Angeles - Zaoh — San Francisco, CA
1555 Mission St, San Francisco - Irifune Restaurant — Honolulu, HI
850 Mililani St, Honolulu - Bocho Sushi — Las Vegas, NV
124 S 6th St Ste 150, Las Vegas - joybento — Seattle, WA
214 Madison St, Seattle
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for light, crisp, fried to order and tempura counter, and treats reviews mentioning greasy or soggy tempura as a strong negative.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX