The Contemporary Asian-Pacific Cuisine at TenPenh draws on the flavors of Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Japan. A few food finds and ideas listed below are not found in many restaurants, if at all. 

1. There are five choices of soy sauce offered: Mushroom, Tamari, Indonesian, light, and soy itself. Specific tastes to go along with a particular dish.

2. From China Bay Restaurant in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown, Jeff Tunks has fresh rice noodles prepared for him daily and delivered to the restaurant. 

3. Tunks has a purveyor in Japan send kasu (sediment from the process of making sake) to his local seafood purveyor. He uses this to flavor the Kasu-Marinated Seabass with Sesame Ocean Salad and Tobiko Butter.

4. Tunks serves only fresh wasabi, which he buys directly from a Japanese purveyor.  

5. Tunks also orders organic yuzu from Japan, which is the juice of a Japanese citrus and the base for the TenPenh salad dressing. 

6. For an amus- bouche at lunch, Tunks serves edamame, the salted green soy beans that come steamed in their shells.  At dinner, he serves a “shooter” of soup in a custom-made shooter glass. The soups change seasonally; in the summertime, it is a Thai Gazpacho, the classic cold tomato and cucumber soup enhanced with coconut milk, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and a touch of spicy saracha sauce; when the weather turns cooler, the shooter becomes a Japanese Squash Soup with Kaffir Lime oil.

7. An unusual but popular garnish to the thick steaks of swordfish served at TenPenh?  A “teepee” of julienned strips of deep-fried bacon.  The salty side is the perfect foil for the meaty fish. 

8. A unique dessert offering is the dramatic Asian tea-wheel, a striking wooden circle that stands on the table bearing a selection of Asian-influenced Petit Fours— tangerine marshmallows; ginger orange cookies; mandarin fruit jellies; coconut shortbread; macaroons; dark-chocolate covered cashews; and a pistachio and dried fruit nougat. 

9. The restaurant’s site has an infamous past. It has been said that some thirty-five years ago the “Rat Pack Boys” (Frank Sinatra and the gang) used to frequent that same corner, Tenth and Pennsylvania, which was the Diner of its day. Owners Gus DiMillo, David Wizenberg, and Jeff Tunks came up with the name TenPenh before discovering that the contractor, Forrester, had family ties to that same spot, and that Mr. Forrester’s uncle owned the restaurant—named Tenth and Penn—in the late 1960s.