Karaku's chef Toyoichiro Seki stands behind the counter in his head-to-toe black chef's uniform. He passes his hand over the bubbling oil in the wok. "What temperature do you fry the tempura at?" I ask. "Oh, I have never used a thermometer," he laughs good-naturedly at the preposterous idea. "Those are for housewives! I've been making tempura for 23 years, I can tell just by looking at the oil." Seki, 45, is the fifth generation to cook his family's tempura recipe--he's even cooked it for Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev. The Seki tempura dynasty claims a 150 year lineage and five acclaimed restaurants in Japan.

Now, Seki heads the first international branch--in Shanghai. "Outside of Japan, we are the only restaurant I know of in the world which specializes in tempura," he says. Over three years were spent on the sparse, exquisite design of the four-storey art-filled building surrounded by gardens, near Xujiahui, where over 50 percent of guests are Japanese.

At Karaku, instead of a sushi counter, there is a "tempura counter" with wok stations. Every diner is personally served by two chefs who batter the jet-fresh fish and veggies, carefully fry them, and finally, put them directly on your plate, piping hot. This style of tempura, fried in pure safflower oil, is exceedingly delicate with a refined subtle flavor, absolutely lacking in greasiness.

"Our tempura has to be cooked in front of you," Seki says, so you can eat it immediately. Astonishingly, each wokful of pure oil is only used once. That's a lot of oil to go through in one day, but it means the flavors of each ingredient are never masked or tainted. "Why do we fry food?" he asks rhetorically, "Because it concentrates the flavor. If you eat shrimp raw, sure it's good, but you won't taste the sweetness."

In terms of his menu, Seki is a strict traditionalist, but his personality is disarmingly humorous. "Every morning I make this sauce myself," he says, pointing to the tentsuyu dipping sauce, "no one else can touch it!" He smiles, then his eyes fall on my dish. "Put some more daikon in your sauce!" he says, then reaches over and adds shaved daikon to my sauce with his long cooking chopsticks. The sauce is so surprisingly complex and savory I want to drink it like soup. ("Go ahead, drink it!" Seki says, laughing). Seki went to school in the U.S., but returned home to assume the tempura mantle. "When I was 5 or 6 years old, I already knew I was going to cook in the restaurant. I think it is my duty to introduce traditional Japanese food to more people."

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