Restaurant review: Hono Tenndon in Mong Kok – tempura rice bowls in the Ladies Market

Known for its bustling Ladies Market, Tung Choi Street in Mong Kok is also lined with restaurants offering inexpensive international dishes ranging from rice noodles to Korean bibimbap to Indian curry.

Hono Tenndon – specialising in tempura rice bowl, or ten don – is a cosy place in the centre of the market, with warm lighting, wooden tables and servers in Japanese-style outfits.

We opted for the signature seafood tempura rice bowl (HK$78) and the vegetable tempura rice bowl (HK$65), both of which were served with miso soup and a small salad.

The servers were nice enough to tell us the best way to eat the Japanese dish: start with the prawn and cabbage leaf tempura, and then break the egg to mix it with rice and other tempura items.

The seafood bowl came with prawn, crab sticks, squid, cabbage, eggplant and lotus root, and the vegetableversion had pumpkin, mushroom and baby corn in addition to eggplant and lotus root.

The prawn tempura was our favourite. It had a thin, crisp batter and a pleasant sweet taste. The squid and lotus root were also enjoyable, with their texture well preserved.

The second part of the meal was not as impressive. We mixed the rice with the tempura egg, soy sauce and furikake [a seasoning mixture including dried ground fish, sesame seeds and chopped seaweed]seasoning. The egg was slightly overcooked so most of the yolk was already solid, while the sauce and furikake lacked flavour. Also, the tempura batter became soggy and tasteless once the sauce was added, so it’s best to eat the deep-fried ingredients quickly.