I Forgot Tenkura existed. I’m glad I went back.

Wildlight has changed quite a bit over the past few years. What was once a growing community with a handful of places to eat now has a slightly larger handful of places to eat. That’s what I call progress.

This is especially exciting if you like sushi. For a while, your options in Wildlight were Hana Sushi or walking into Publix and picking up one of those little plastic containers from the sushi counter. Now, with the addition of Tenkura Sushi & Asian Cuisine, Wildlight has a grand total of two, count ‘em, two actual sushi restaurants.

The options are almost limitless. I say that with sarcasm dripping off my words, like the soy sauce on the gyoza I got.

Tenkura opened in November of 2025, and I actually visited shortly after. I got the hibachi, enjoyed it, thought the prices were reasonable, and then proceeded to completely forget the restaurant existed for nearly a year. This isn't necessarily an indictment of Tenkura. I forget about a lot of things. But recently I drove by and realized, "Oh yeah, that place still exists."

So I went back. And somehow, I enjoyed it even more the second time.

Tenkura is small.Much smaller than it looks from the outside. The sushi bar sits front and center with booths along the sides and a few tables filling out the middle. Colorful Japanese carp streamers hang above the sushi bar, the restaurant is bright and clean, and because of the size, you can basically see everything happening from wherever you sit.

This is probably not where I'd bring a party of twelve. Four people? Sure. One or two? Perfect.

I went alone around 2:30 in the afternoon, near the tail end of their lunch hours, which turned out to be exactly what I wanted. I’ve never understood restaurants where the music is loud, fifty people are yelling over each other, silverware is clanging around, and somehow I'm supposed to enjoy a $20 plate of food in the middle of what sounds like an active construction site. Tenkura at 2:30 was the opposite.

Quiet. Calm. Peaceful.

I walked in, was greeted immediately, and then seated without waiting. My server was wonderful: attentive, smiley and bright-eyed. The chefs behind the sushi bar were joking around with each other, giving the whole restaurant a surprisingly fun spirit for a place that was otherwise so relaxed.

The menu is about what you'd expect from something called Tenkura Sushi & Asian Cuisine. There is sush i— a lot of it. There’s also hibachi, teriyaki, tempura, fried rice, noodles and curry.

Nothing on the menu is particularly revolutionary. If you blindfolded me, drove me to a random Asian restaurant and then asked me to identify which sushi restaurant I was eating from, I’d probably have some questions about why you blindfolded me.

But I also probably couldn't tell you.

That's not really a criticism. Tenkura is trying to make good food at a reasonable price, and the lunch menu is where things became much more interesting to me.

I decided to get something I almost never order: a bento box.

For $13, I ordered the teriyaki steak bento. At least, I thought I did. What arrived was shrimp.

Fortunately, this was the best possible mistake because the moment I saw five enormous shrimp sitting in front of me, I realized I was apparently in much more of a seafood mood than I had previously thought. My server rang me up for the shrimp, which was $12.95, and I decided the universe had made the correct decision on my behalf.

And this was a lot of food for $12.95.

The divided tray came with five plump grilled shrimp over broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, zucchini and onions, along with fried rice, four pieces of a California roll, three gyoza and a crab rangoon. Lunch also came with soup or salad, which for me, became miso soup.

The shrimp were excellent. They had a little char from the grill, a sticky sweetness from the teriyaki and just enough saltiness to pull everything together. More importantly, they were legitimately plump and juicy. Not five depressing little curled-up shrimp hiding underneath a pile of onions. Five proper shrimp.

The gyoza may have been my second favorite part of the tray, which surprised me because the crab rangoon was sitting right there with its deliciously creamy self. You usually order gyoza separately and get around six, so getting three tucked into the lunch already felt generous. These were sitting in a shallow bath of soy sauce, soaking up just enough that every bite had a savory, salty punch.

But what struck me almost as much as the food was the presentation. Everything had its own little section in the bento tray, colorful and neatly arranged, and the entire thing looked like someone had actually cared about how my lunch reached the table.

My total after tax was $13.86.

There’re fast-food restaurants where I can spend that much money and receive a paper bag containing something that looks like it was assembled during an evacuation. Here I was sitting in a clean, quiet restaurant eating grilled shrimp, vegetables, sushi, fried rice, gyoza, a crab rangoon and miso soup off a beautifully arranged tray for under $14.

That's a pretty easy sell for anyone.

And I think that's ultimately what I like about Tenkura. It's a pleasant little restaurant that seems to understand exactly what it needs to be. The food is good, the lunch prices are excellent, and for a solo diner, it might be one of the more comfortable spots I've found in Wildlight.

Wildlight keeps getting busier. More houses, more businesses, more people, more traffic, more everything. There’s constantly something being built, opened, announced or squeezed into another bay. And in the middle of all that, I was able to walk into this tiny sushi restaurant at 2:30 in the afternoon, sit down by myself, spend less than $14 and have a relaxing meal.

Then I could walk to Publix. Or any of the increasingly large number of things surrounding it.

Wildlight has options now. Almost limitless ones.