The name of the restaurant is “Sushi, Sushi,” but warm and delicious shrimp tempura is one of the many stars of the show on the menu of our Japanese restaurant at Turning Stone Resort Casino.

All told, tempura currently appears on two menu items: the firecracker roll (with avocado, cucumber, and chili sauce) and the sunshine roll (with avocado, lump crab, and passionfruit ponzu sauce).

You know tempura: Japanese dish that comprises seafood, meat, and/or vegetables that have been battered and deep fried. The result is something crunchy-crispy on the outside and soft and tender on the inside—a great one-two punch of flavor and possibilities.

Tempura has been around for a while. The cooking style is believed to date all the way back to the 1600s, when the technique of fritter-cooking with a batter of flour and eggs was acquired in Nagasaki from Portuguese missionaries. Here at Turning Stone, we turn tempura on its head, deploying a one-of-a-kind technique for keeping our tempura items dry and crunchy.

The secrets: vodka, egg powder, and a batter we make from several different starches.

Executive Sous Chef Adam Burten said he learned the vodka-and-egg-powder trick from iconic chef Nobu Matsuhisa at an event in Miami, noting that the alcohol burns off during frying.

“Everybody I’ve told about our method has never heard anything like it before,” said Adam. “When they eat it, when they taste how crunchy and delicious our tempura is, they understand that we’re doing something different.”

 Looking forward, Adam said there may be other tempura options on the Sushi Sushi menu soon. Specifically, he said he’s recently offered specials including tempura sweet potato and tempura avocado, and he noted guests have raved about both. Perhaps even as an appetizer, these flash-fried items could be popular overnight.

“We’re always looking to do something new,” he said. “There are plenty of new things we can do with tempura from here.”