Why tenshindon – crab omelette on rice – owes its name to Tianjin
Several legends claim that the Japanese-Chinese dish of crabmeat omelette with various toppings was named after the northern Chinese port city
At almost every Chinese restaurant in Japan you’ll find a dish called tenshindon. “Tenshin” is the Japanese way of saying Tianjin, a port city in northeast China, and “don” is a dish that consists of a bowl of rice with various toppings.
Tenshindon is usually a crabmeat omelette on rice, with a thick, glossy topping of either soy or sweet and sour sauce. Sometimes the omelette contains other ingredients, such as pork or prawns.
Tianjin was made a treaty port in 1860 during the second opium war, and many countries, including Japan, established concessions in the city and began trading. A significant Japanese population in Tianjin meant the city was familiar to many of those back home.
Fumiyoshi Yokota, a professor of Chinese cuisine, dedicates an entire book to the food of Tianjin. In the 2009 work, the title of which translates to The Research of Chinese Food Culture: Tianjin, Yokota says there are two legends about how tenshindon came to be: one saying it originated in Tokyo, the other, Osaka.
The Tokyo story is that the third-generation operator of Rai Rai Ken, the restaurant that popularised shoyu (soy sauce) ramen, had just returned from serving in the army during the second Sino-Japanese war (1937-45). One day, a hungry customer walked in and asked to be served as quickly as possible. A cook combined egg and crab to make an omelette, served it on top of rice and added the sauce he used for sweet and sour pork. Rai Rai Ken’s owner called it tenshindon, as there were many Japanese soldiers in Tianjin, and the city was well known among Tokyo’s residents.
