Tenkatori USA — Restaurant in Gardena

Tenkatori is a fast food chain from Japan specializing in Japanese style fried chicken called “karaage” (marinated in Japsnese spices and dredged in flour and deep fried).

This branch is located in the food court of Marukai forum supermarket in Gardena.

We ordered the Karaage set consisting of 5 pieces of chicken, miso soup, potato salad and rice. We go there at 3pm and they didn’t have any steamed rice ready so they offered either an extra piece of chicken, extra salad or extra potato salad so we opted for extra chicken ( 6 pieces in the picture).

We also ordered chicken cartilage made “karaage style.” Everything is cooked to order so it’s a little bit of a wait, but worthwhile. The taste of the chicken is delicious and it’s juicy — they fry raw chicken so it’s juicy unlike other places, which pre-fry and reheat/refry.

They were already sold out of teba/chicken wings at 3p on a weekday, which was a bit of a surprise and disappointment so overall I’d rate it 4 out of 5 stars. I’ll definitely be back, the chicken is very good and I prefer this place over the other choices in the food court at Marukai market.

FYI: If you don’t want to buy bottled water, you can also get their self serve complimentary filtered water from a dispenser — be sure to ask for...

Tenkatori is by far my favorite place to get karaage. No other establishment has replaced it and I'm convinced it'll never be replaced in my heart. I've been to the Costa Mesa location several times and decided to check out their Gardena location to see if it was just as good.

|| L O C A T I O N / P A R K I N G || -Located inside the food court of Tokyo Central. It's probably one of the first two food places you'll see once you enter Tokyo Central -Cross Streets of Tokyo Central are S Western Ave. and Artesia Blvd. -Good amount of parking in the shopping center. It may be a struggle to get a close spot, but if you're willing to get the extra steps, parking won't be an issue.

|| F O O D || Chicken Boneless Thigh - You honestly cannot go wrong with just ordering their chicken boneless thigh. You can order it by 5pcs, 8pcs or 12pcs. Each piece is reasonably sized, seasoned and extremely juicy. It's simply fried to perfection. It's one of those rare cases when even the food is cold, it still tastes good. Maybe it's the batter they use but it makes their chicken so addicting!

I'm looking forward to trying the chicken cartilage the next time, but honestly, it is so hard to gravitate away from the chicken boneless thigh...

Best fried chicken, hands down. (5 stars)Nuff said… but do not get the spicy miso ramen (minus 4 star). I don’t have a problem with spicy foods, and I’m an avid user of chili oils, tobasco, salsas, etc. but the level of spice added to the ramen, makes it practically inedible. I really wanted it to taste good, and was constantly looking for the silver lining, while forcing myself to endure the burning and choking of the chilies that made contact to my esophagus. I didn’t order this to win a t-shirt or get a photo posted on the wall. I think if the heat was turned down by half it would be perfect. But I think this option for should have come...