Tempura Matsui - New York

Amazing! The tempura here is so good. You get a tray of side dishes and then get served pieces as they are cooked. The shrimp was my favorite, and the uni wrapped in seaweed (additional $20) dipped in the salt was delicious. The service is A quality. All the staff were extremely helpful and friendly. We really enjoyed the overall dining experience and the lunch was very reasonably priced at $55 for the set menu. Would definitely come back.

Amazing sets of little dishes and then tempura one by one. It was impressive that only one person was frying the tempura with one assistant plating them in front of you. There were 9 of us for the first lunch seating. Service was fantastic. Tempura was hot. I was warned, but it was too good not to eat everything right away. I burned my tongue but I was happy. If you love tempura, spend the time and money on the reasonable lunch reservation.

Unique and impressive place for high end Japanese Tempura. It’s a omikase menu with many courses of fish and seasonal vegetables. Everything is high quality and the tempura, fried immediately before you get it, is light and heightens the texture and flavor of the ingredients. Service also was top notch. It’s expensive, but there are a ton of high end sushi places around and just one of these. Try it!

It’s good fine dining experience of tempura in NYC, but still can’t reach the level of Mikawa Zezankyo in Tokyo. But I think this is probably already the best tempura restaurant you can have in USA. IMO they can be better by changing batter a bit for those seafood which has lighter flavor

We came at night for the tempura omakase. For each piece, a consistent tempura skin wraps the tempura, with not much surface area for flakes or crunch. The skin wasn’t too crispy either, instead often feeling quite oily. Quite a few pieces were on the side of overfried. Service was alright, and not at all personalized for nearly 300 per person; the dishes were hastily explained. The appetizers to start were good, but not necessarily appetizing. The baby yellowtail was remarkable in terms of texture, playfully tender without any fishiness. The foie gras chawanmushi had some of the softest chawanmushi I’ve had. However, the foie gras flavor was covered by a strong dashi and mirin. Now onto tempura. The shrimp was deliciously sweet, but it could’ve been more tender, and the tempura wasn’t crispy. The second piece of the same shrimp, this time meant to be dipped in dashi, was bigger and better in terms of tempura quality. The shrimp heads that came after was especially palatable, and its high surface area was ideal to capture a light crunch. The okra was perfect. It was fried just right, which intensified its subtle flavor. The Hokkaido scallop was sweet and slightly raw inside, but could have been less cooked. Some creativity was exhibited in the middle courses. The fish was presented very creatively: the bone removed and to be had separately. The meat was so soft with some good crunch in the tempura flakes. The bone was great too; it was more deeply fried for pure crunch. The technique required for this course was outstanding. Next, the fluke wrapped uni was also creative. The uni was hot and doesn’t lose any flavor, and it was a surprisingly great pairing with the soft fish shell. The lotus root and shrimp paste 'sandwich ' was featured a less ideal root that was more mature, quite starchy and less crunchy. The rice to end has a more deep fried tempura that was almost a little stale. The Dessert was quite creative: slightly jellified grapefruit with wine, then served in a cream whisky sauce. It was very tasty.