Kamakura-don: Prawns Under an Egg Blanket

Before the prawns

Kamakura-ebi was once a name for the Japanese spiny lobster, better known today as Ise-ebi. In Edo, present-day Tokyo, it was named after Kamakura because that was where it came from. The name appears in Yamato Honzō, a natural-history book published in 1709. That passage explains the lobster’s other name in the same way: Ise-ebi, because so many came from Ise.

That was the seafood used in the earlier Kamakura-don described by two long-established local restaurants, Tenkin and Ishibashi. Chunks of locally caught lobster went into the dish, though the two shops prepared it differently. As catches declined and prices rose in the 1950s and 1960s, lobster became increasingly difficult to serve. Prawns took its place.

At Tenkin, according to its third-generation proprietress, the prawn version began with leftovers: prawn tempura bound with egg and packed into her daughter’s lunchbox. It went down so well that two tempura prawns under egg became the restaurant’s Kamakura-don.

The lobster left the recipe. Kamakura stayed in the name.

Back under the egg

At Minemoto, tofu, pickles and other side dishes were arranged around the red-and-black bowl.