The art of tempura, the hand of a master

Hiroshi Komatsu’s work is hot and intense. A hundred times a night he plucks food from roiling oil the instant it’s ready to serve. When he sets the order on the polished granite counter at his tempura bar, Komatsu, it will always be crisp and light.

With baskets of fresh vegetables on display behind him, Komatsu cooks in a handmade copper caldron using a proprietary blend of sesame and vegetable cooking oils, which gives his food a faintly nutty flavor. To season their tempura, customers get tiny ceramic pots of Japanese sea salts: yuzu-flavored, green tea-flavored and natural.

They’re also offered cups of hojicha, a charcoal-roasted green tea that’s thought to aid digestion, or for those who prefer, there is a selection of premium sakes.

Komatsu’s attention to these fine points isn’t lost on the restaurant’s regulars. Many are Japanese nationals employed at Toyota America or the dozens of other Japanese conglomerate offices scattered around this part of Torrance.

Word of mouth has lured them to an utterly unremarkable Carson Street mini-mall, across from a lawn-mower repair shop and a 24-hour taco stand. You could drive by the restaurant for years without realizing it exists or guessing that it serves some of the most spectacular tempura outside Japan.

But once inside, you can imagine yourself in a staunchly traditional Tokyo neighborhood, one where the rise of caterpillar rolls and the fashion for linguini in uni sauce have been ignored. The hostess greets familiar faces with an almost indiscernible bow. A row of shoes sits discreetly outside a small tatami room.

The understated Japanese style of the restaurant’s three enclosed booths may seem austere and dull. But take a second look and you’ll see they’re luxuriously comfy, with soft leather banquettes and a soji screen that slides shut if, like the businessmen who come at lunch, you need to negotiate a deal. In the booths just as at the bar, tempura comes to the table a few pieces at a time so it won’t cool and wilt.

You can order a la carte from the brocade-covered menu or from the baskets of vegetables behind the bar. A $21 tempura “set” is half a dozen small fish courses and three vegetable courses. A much more opulent omakase dinner, for $40, changes with the season and the whim of the chef. Both set meals include a rich, red miso soup, rice and pickles.

The menu isn’t limited to tempura. There’s also a lengthy list of hot and cold small dishes, all served on assorted shapes and colors of stoneware chosen to complement each of the foods.

No one seems to rush here. Groups of diners often start with a few items and gradually work up to the tempura course. They’ll order a sake (from eight premium varieties) to go with a plate of very fresh raw mackerel, with its dipping sauce of crushed umeboshi plum, or possibly with the quickly blanched asparagus dressed with black sesame seeds. Then they’ll pause to reconsider the menu.

Almost every dish is flawlessly prepared. A whole, deep-fried garlic bulb (listed under appetizers) yields sweet, melting cloves that slip from their skin and dissolve on your tongue. Cherrystone clams simmered in sake are cooked just enough to open. A splash of bright green mitsuba, a Japanese parsley, adds the perfect herbal accent.

Chunks of Kurobuta pork, with the prized ribbons of fat at their centers, are stewed in a soy sauce-accented broth. A garnish of blanched edible chrysanthemum adds a bitter-sweet contrast. Seared beef served sashimi-style has a deep meat flavor. (Get the plain version; the salty “stamina sauce” does nothing for the meat.)

Komatsu uses super-fresh ingredients. Tiny, tender leek greens appear in scrambled egg and leeks. The fresh soft-shell crab is filled with briny juices, and the salmon roe on the chef’s salad has a rich, dark color and minimal saltiness.

If there were a tempura Olympics, Komatsu-san should surely enter his baroque chestnut-stuffed umeboshi, which often appears as a finale on the omakase dinner.

When you bite into its crackly surface, a jam-like ooze of pickled plum flows into your mouth, carrying with it tiny cubes of chestnut.

To get this, however, you’ll have to come for dinner. During the lunchtime rush, Komatsu helps prepare donburi and noodle bowls in the restaurant’s enclosed kitchen. But in the evening, standing behind his bar, Komatsu is one hot tempura chef on a roll.

*

Komatsu

Tempura Bar

Location: 1644 W. Carson St., Torrance, (310) 787-0787

Price: Appetizers and a la carte tempura, $4.50 to $12; tempura dinners, $21 and $40; lunch, $8.50 to $10

Best dishes: Omakase, clams in sake, mackerel with plum sauce, chef’s salad, Kurobuta pork

Details: Lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner, 5:30 to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday; 5:30 to 10 p.m. Saturday; variable hours (call ahead) Sunday. Beer, wine and sake. Parking lot. Visa, Master Card, MCJB.