Tensuke Market - Columbus

Calm yet stimulating, a sense of mystery followed by a feeling of satisfaction. Small markets always seem to convey a sense of self preserved seclusion that makes them intimidating to enter, do not let any unfounded trepidation stop you from going to Tensuke Market in Columbus, Ohio. When the doors open into the brightly lit store an isle of vibrant sushi, bento boxes, and other ready to eat items welcomes you into the store. There are three main rooms to the market the first has a mix of imported snack foods, dry goods, house hold items, really nice looking fresh fish, produce and frozen goods (bok choy, small frozen fish, octopus…)

The second room is stocked with noodles, cooking supplies, frozen meats, a cold chest for tofu and other chilled items. Also in this room is a sushi window where all of the prepared sushi items in the front are made. I haven’t tried any of their work yet but based on the presentation of the prepared items and the lack of fish smell I trust them to deliver a satisfactory product.

The final room is the Tensuke Express where you can eat what you just bought upfront or order from a large menu of soup bowls, noodle dishes, curries, or ala carte items, there are about thirty items in all. We ordered a bowl of BBQ eel and rice. They gave us a Red Lobster style buzzer and we grabbed a booth in the lounge. This room is a bit of a departure from the store appearance you see in the rest of the market. Wooden floors, a large exotic fish tank and nice furnishings fill the space while two flat screens play loops of Japanese T.V. shows and picture menu. It only took about four minutes for our buzzer to go off; I grabbed the food and some Japanese black pepper from the stash of condiments on the counter. Don’t compare this eel to the little slivers of fish jerky you get on sushi at a normal Chinese buffet. This version of eel is spoon tender fish with a teriyaki style glaze on top. The taste of the eel seemed slightly over come by the sauce but it wasn’t that big of a deal. The bowl came with a better than average cup of miso soup and was well worth the $7.25.

As we left I pondered getting one of the small imported energy drinks but chose a bottle of milk coffee which by my pallet was better than Starbucks. I like this shop a lot, the atmosphere is just nice the food is really good and the cool items in the store are a big plus.