Tencha 天茶

Also called tempura chazuke, ten-cha

Tempura, usually a kakiage fritter, in hot tea or dashi. A common way to end a tempura course, the other choice being tendon.

Tencha is tempura chazuke. Ten for tempura, cha for tea. Pour hot tea or dashi over tempura and rice and you have it.

The tempura is usually kakiage, small bits of seafood or vegetables held together by batter. In a tempura course the kakiage comes last, and you get it either on rice as tendon or in broth as tencha.

Mine at Asanuma had no rice at all, just the kakiage in broth with a lot of green aonori seaweed. After seeing everyone else’s tendon, I’d pick tendon.

Different word, same sound: tencha written 碾茶 is the shade-grown tea leaf that gets ground into matcha.

See alsoTentsuyu