Tenshima

The batter is remade every half-hour so the gluten never gets a chance. That is the level of fuss.

Tenshima is the booking for someone who thinks tempura is a side dish. It is a counter in Millenia Walk that takes ten guests a service, where each piece is fried to order and handed straight over, and it was one of the new one-star restaurants in the Michelin Guide Singapore 2026, announced in August. It sits in Michelin’s $$$ band, so this is a special dinner rather than a weeknight one, and with ten seats a service the next action is to book early.

Why it’s worth it

The fuss. Takahiro Shima, whose name is on the door, spent 16 years training, including time at the Singapore outposts of Ginza Tenharu and at Tentsuru in The St. Regis. He treats tempura the way a kaiseki chef treats a menu, adjusting batter thickness and oil temperature every day for the ingredients and the weather. The batter is low-gluten flour, egg yolk, ice and water, fried in sunflower oil in a copper pot, and remade every half-hour before the gluten can toughen it. That is the difference between tempura and something fried in batter, and you can watch it happen from your seat.

The menu goes well past prawns. Ingredients come in from Japan several times a week, and the omakase runs to shark’s fin tempura, uni and caviar on a sheet of fried seaweed and A5 Miyazaki wagyu; the wagyu with a half-boiled yolk and sukiyaki sauce is the signature. The meal closes on a rice course, tendon or tencha, and then the dish we would come back for on description alone: sweet potato steamed for hours, dry-aged, fried and served with milk ice cream.

How to do it well

Book directly through the restaurant’s website, and well ahead. Lunch and dinner are both limited to ten guests; the restaurant is closed on Mondays and doesn’t serve lunch on Thursdays, which is exactly the day someone will suggest.

Eat each piece as soon as it lands. The pleasure here is the rhythm – one piece, eaten immediately, then the next at the pace of the fryer – and a piece left while you finish a story is a piece wasted. Leave the phone in the bag after the first photo.

Don’t judge it by the corridor. It is a unit in a Marina Centre mall, but inside it is calm and properly Japanese, with a Japanese cypress counter and washi details. Millenia Walk is linked to Promenade MRT, so you can arrive without having fought the weather.

Bring the person who orders tempura as an afterthought. They won’t after this.

Good to know Book directly via the restaurant’s website; each lunch and dinner service is limited to ten guests. Closed Mondays, no lunch on Thursdays; full hours in the facts box. Millenia Walk is linked to Promenade MRT.

Tenshima | Millenia Walk, #01-09, 9 Raffles Boulevard, Singapore 039596 | Nearest MRT: Promenade