It was 2 weeks ago. I had an important meeting which drained my energy. As the result, I got hungry, but the work was not over yet. So I had to eat but not alone, with others which of course I needed to have my lunch in a decent restaurant.
My choice was a Japanese restaurant. They had a weekday set menu which was cheaper, tailor made for office workers or salaryman. It is also a good scapegoat or camouflage for frugal and stingy people, so we are not seen as petti people lol.
This was my pick, a tempura soba set. It cost me around 3.3 USD before tax and service, which was a cheap for sure. After tax and service, they became 4 USD, still a cheap one... 4 USD for a soba bowl, assorted tempura, and free refill ocha. It's a steal for sure!
Of course there was a catch there... look at the Soba bowl. It was god dam small. I could not get full from it, but thanks to free flow or refill ocha, I could drink a lot and had myself full.
The taste, I have to say it was great. It was above my expectation, and I could understand with that price, that's already more I could ask, by portion...
Great taste, great price, so what infuriate me then?
WHERE'S MY SHRIMP?
I ordered Tempura Soba, it meant to be a tempura dish and a soba dish. They did give me that, but not a proper one.
This was my tempura dish, it tasted great, maybe I should say it excellent. But I still felt that I got scammed there. The tempura consisted of eggplant, and okra, an onion slice and a lemon to be squeeze above them.
Let see from another angle. We had spinach, sweet potato and a slice of carrot which was not shown there... There wasn't any Shrimp hiding behind those vegetables there... Where did my Shrimp go?
I asked the waitress and she said their assorted tempura for the set menu had no shrimps nor fishes. It was a vegetable only tempura. On one part she was not wrong, if you deep fried vegetables with dough, you could still call them tempura too...
But I say on one part... on the other part, she was totally wrong. If you say tempura and you write that in your menu, even tempura could mean deep fried stuffs in dough and eaten with Tentsuyu or Tempura Dipping Sauce... unless you state it as vegan tempura, or avocado tempura, or mozzarella cheese tempura or any other thing... a Tempura only word means a shrimp tempura...
Even Google agrees with me. A Tempura Soba should represent a Shrimp Temputa bathing in Soba bowl lol. Like I have said above, unless you state what tempura it is, a tempura only should come as a shrimp.
Overall it should be a great meal. I admit the taste was very good but I came there, ordered the set menu with the mind set and expectation of having a shrimp and noodle as my lunch... No matter how good the meal was, it was definitely not a shrimp as I expected before...
