KATHMANDU:

Did you think that Japanese cuisine was just sushi? If you did, here’s a chance for you to broaden your knowledge as well as taste the goodness of ‘tempura’.

Tempura is a Japanese dish of vegetables, shrimp or other seafood, dipped in batter and deep fried and served hot with tempura sauce. Doesn’t it sound like having hot, hot pakoras on a wet rainy evening? Heaven, isn’t it?

Well, The Café at Hyatt Regency is giving you opportunity to taste this piece of heaven. It opens its doors to the Tempura Festival till August and the fest is on from 7:00 pm onwards.

The chefs have prepared vegetarian and non-vegetarian tempura to suit every palate. You have a choice from prawn tempura, fish, chicken, cottage cheese, mushroom, tofu and mixed vegetables. And the tempura of your choice will be served with dashi, mirin tempura sauce, radish and ginger pickle.

What’s that, you wonder?

Dashi is a clear soup stock, while mirin is sweet sake.

Considered an archetypal Japanese food, tempura has its origins with the advent of Portuguese missionaries in the 16th Century and by the 19th Century, it had become a popular fast food in Tokyo.

And experts say that the secret to eating tempura is to eat it “hot”.

So, warm up your evenings with some hot tempura.