M Tempura — Restaurant in Durham

Edit: It’s been several years since we have dined at M Tempura. The M Omakase is the perfect amount and variety of food offered. We really enjoyed the Sake pairing and though it was worth the price for their decent sized pours. All were unique and enhanced the course being served. Staff and service were exceptional start to finish. Chef Gass explained the difference between male and female scallops and was nice enough to split them so we could taste the difference. I watched him visit each table which I thought was a nice touch. The Chawanmushi was incredible and the highlight of the meal for me. Overall, a truly unique experience but sadly M Tempura is my least favorite M restaurant when comparing the food offered and the price point. This place is great for an anniversary or birthday, but my preference is still the Bento Box at M Sushi or pretty much anything at M Pocha.

I am a huge fan of Chef Mike Lee. The love and attention he puts into his establishments is the kind of next level dining I prefer. I have been slow rolling this place as the first wave of reviews were mixed and they clearly needed to work out some kinks. With a secondary hood installed to resolve the excess fry smell and chef Savannah Miller at the helm, we dined here this past Friday night and were blown away. Only 34 seats here so I highly recommend making reservations on Open Table to sit at the bar. Bar seating is at 5:30pm, 7:30pm, and 9:30pm only. 6:30pm and 8:30pm are reserved for the outlying tables. Treat yourself and order Traditional Style Omakase ($43). Out of the 11 courses of tempura, the mero seabass and the scallop were the favorites of the night. Do not dip the seabass or scallop, just a light touch of fresh lemon is all it needs. Speaking of dipping sauce, the tempura sauce served here is thinner and lightly flavored. I can see how this type of sauce allows the tempura to shin but personally, I prefer a more flavorful sauce. From the curdo to the udon bowl, everything was fresh and delicious. Service was outstanding and the ginger ice cream with its spicy candied ginger topped off an amazing dining experience with friends. Allot at least 1.5 hours to enjoy this multi-course meal. My one grip is the markup on sake that I first noticed at M sushi. The Sacred Mist Nigori $35 a bottle here sells for around $15 retail so I stuck to the "draft" hot sake for a mere $7 and ordered another for good measure. My husband did order a pear cider and thought the pour was skimpy. If I had to estimate the amount, I would guess 5 oz. for the $7 price tag. The Bento Box at M sushi still has my heart but the Traditional Omakase here is a close second. The only other place I could compare M Tempura to is Yamazushi, 7 miles south of here. They are slightly similar in cuisine and multi-course meals but Yamazushi is $120 per person in a private setting. It pleases me to see Chef Lee devote so many fine restaurants to the Durham food scene. I will continue to dine at his M series and look forward to his future establishments when they...

First off I would like to say that I would rate this 3.5 starts if I could, but given the choice between 3 or 4 stars, I couldn’t come up with enough reasons to rate it higher.

The pros:

The food and ambiance is good, I liked the small intimate setting. They have tables and seating around the cooking station. As some have mentioned, there is a fry oil smell in the air, so I was glad to be at a table. I didn’t think the smell was anywhere near as bad as some people described however.

The wait staff was all very professional and attentive. They described the food and setting very well and I would rate them highly.

The food was good, but I didn’t think it was great. The tempura batter is very light and is not over whelming or heavy, which I liked. I had the basic set and it came with a salad with some carrots, cauliflower and greens with a ginger dressing. The salad and dressing were very good, but it needed something else to make it better. Another crunchy vegetable would have helped.

The white rice is just that. The excitement for the rice is a perfectly cooked egg on top. This seems to have been some type of deep fried egg and it is not a typical fried egg you may be thinking of. If you like eggs, this one was great.

The ginger ice cream was fantastic.

Mediocre:

The tempura itself was hit or miss. Several pieces were not hot. They are all 1 or 2 bites each. There is a dipping sauce that I found underwhelming and salt available (and needed) to add for flavor. The sea bass, scallop and shrimp were all good. Some of the vegetables were better than others. Only the eggplant was hot. Everything else quite cool.

In general I found the tempura fine, but not special. Portions are quite small. We left filled, and the portion for us was OK. Others may be disappointed, especially in lieu of the price.

Summary;

In general the meal was average. Some food cold or lukewarm. The prices are quite high for the experience and food. With a bottle of wine and tip we were at about $150; and we each had the lowest priced dinner.

There is not enough variety here to keep me coming back. I felt that for the price I could find much better dining options.

This seems to fall into that category of places that get some sort of cult following. Someone says it is great and like sheep the reviews follow. Bon Appetite recently mentioned them, which likely will drive that opinion even higher. I didn’t feel the meal lived up to the hype. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t as good as the reviews...

Overall I was very disappointed in this experience. We went for my birthday dinner so I was very excited to try the last of the M restaurants. The food was subpar, service was very poor, and the overall experience was not worth the price tag.

The four of us got the traditional tempura omakase and two of us had the sake tasting. My sister is pregnant and we alerted the server at the start and she said no problem and they could cook everything through.

The first thing to come out was the crudo. My sisters came very raw without any acknowledgment. We had to remind the server who took it away and came back a few minutes later with the same dish but sliced avocado. Not a huge deal, but was disappointing seeing as the place was fairly empty and this was a clear note we made from the start.

The food was fine. My mom asked to have the fish cooked through for the tempura portion. They brought three on the medium rare side and one cooked for my sister. The server said she’d bring an additional cooked swordfish piece for my mom and that never came.

One sake for the entire tempura portion. No real stars but the mushrooms and the eggplant. We did enjoy the pickled daikon. The menu said salmon and scallop. Each person got half of a scallop. The salmon was replaced by the swordfish, but the waitress didn’t make any mention of the replacement until we asked if salmon was still part of the set.

The udon dish was good. The noodles were bouncy and the broth had a nice flavor, although very very salty. Once dessert was brought out we let the waitress know that we didn’t receive the last two sakes. She brought the last two over at once and made a small note of which one was which. I would not recommend the tasting as we barely received any tasting notes.

The dessert was a panna cotta type dish. It was so bad I only had one bite.

We made note of the birthday on open table. Usually it is nice for the place to at least acknowledge the note on open table or ask if you’re celebrating anything. For a dinner around $90 a person I was extremely disappointed. My expectations of an M restaurant were way higher, especially because this was the last and I heard one of the best ones. The service missed...