Tempura Motoyoshi is one of Tokyo’s most celebrated tempura specialists. A meal at this Michelin-starred restaurant in Minami-Aoyama could easily set you back ¥19,000. But if you want a little teaser before splashing out for an omakase dinner, drop by the restaurant’s offshoot at Daikanyama.
As its name suggests, Tempura Motoyoshi Imo is a takeaway store offering one of its sister restaurant’s signature items – the deep-fried sweet potato tempura (imo means potato in Japanese). You could just get a piece to go (¥500), but we highly recommended the Noto salt-flavoured milk soft serve with pieces of deep-fried sweet potato and topped with crispy tempura bits.
This inventive dessert is sensational. The warm sweet potato with its lightly crisp skin has been cooked for an hour to render its flesh buttery soft. It’s the perfect foil for the cold and creamy soft serve, while the sprinkling of salt brings all these flavours together to create one satisfying dessert. The cup soft serve offers three pieces of sweet potato tempura while the granola cone option has two, both priced at ¥650 each.
(Insider tip: the word marujyu which you see on the menu is the local industry term for sweet potato.)