Sakura Ebi Kakiage

Sakura ebi are a Suruga Bay near-monopoly. The tiny translucent shrimp, pink as their cherry-blossom namesake, are commercially fished in almost no other water on the planet — a narrow strip off Shizuoka is effectively the whole harvest. The fishery itself has a date and an accident behind it: the story local records tell is of an aji fisherman off Yui in 1894 whose net sank deeper than intended and came up glowing with these creatures nobody had been landing. An accident, then a livelihood, then an emblem of Meiji-era Shizuoka's coast.

Kakiage is the dish that shows them off. Unlike the neat single pieces of standard tempura, kakiage binds a loose tangle of small ingredients into one craggy fritter with the barest film of batter — here, hundreds of whole shrimp suspended in a lacework that shatters when you bite it. The trick is restraint: ice-cold batter mixed until barely combined, a low ladle-slide into 170°C oil, and no fussing. Done well it fries up the color of the shrimp themselves, tastes of clean sweet shellfish and toasted flour, and needs nothing but a pinch of salt and a squeeze of Shizuoka lemon.