{"id":2731,"date":"2014-10-13T11:31:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T18:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/?p=2731"},"modified":"2014-10-13T11:31:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T18:31:45","slug":"katsukichi-asakusa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/?p=2731","title":{"rendered":"Katsukichi, A Unique Tonkatsu in Asakusa, Tokyo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

This will be the last post about my Japanese food adventures on my trip there. For those of you who like my Thai recipes, stay put. I am still on many trips at this time of a year but should be back in my kitchen for a little bit. Yes, I get to stay at my own home for twelves days this month, two days more than last month, and that should be improving toward the end of the year.<\/p>\n

The last spot is not any new adventure. I was at this restaurant last time I was here, and wanted to go back there again. The restaurant’s name is Katsukichi. Does that name give away the type of food they would be serving?<\/p>\n

Katsu means fried pork\u2026or at least that\u2019s what I think. My clues are Tonkatsu is fried pork with bread crumb crust, and Katsudon is the rice bowl topped with fried pork. And Katsukichi is a small restaurant in Asakusa that serves only fried pork.<\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

I know pig isn\u2019t the most popular meat in the US. There is a large Jewish population (the ones who keep kosher don\u2019t touch it, plus all the Islamics who don\u2019t eat pork because it is also taboo in their religion.) and I have to admit that the pork in the US doesn\u2019t taste that good. It tastes almost like chicken to me, really bland.<\/p>\n

The Asians love to eat pork a lot more than any other kind of meat. Their beef is too tough and normally they keep the cows or buffaloes to work in the field, and eating a tractor isn\u2019t a good idea. Chickens are always abundant, but they don\u2019t taste as good or as meaty as pig.<\/p>\n

Believe me, pig tastes really great when you can get the tasty one, but not the ones eating garbage and raised in the pen, though. The wild roaming pigs who search for fresh bamboo shoots, mushrooms, eating whatever they find, taste so much better, as do free range chickens.<\/p>\n

The pigs in Japan, Greece and Australia taste nearly the best in the world, in my mind. When you visit these countries I recommend at least try a meal with pork\u2014you won\u2019t be disappointed. Japan has the black hog pig\u2014Kurabuta pig\u2014 (Berkshire pig) as the best pork, but the regular pork also tastes very good.<\/p>\n

Tonkasu is one of the most popular dishes in Japan. You would see a lot of restaurants only mastering this one dish. They would serve only breaded fried pork, or may be Chicken kutsu, breaded fried chicken, for the foreigners, and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t imagine this kind of restaurant would be a success in the US, where a lot of people are afraid of fried foods, \u201cEwwwww\u2026that is such a tremendous amount of calories,\u201d or \u201cNo, they might use old oil. I don\u2019t want trans-fat.\u201d They say, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t eat fried food,\u201d and they turn around and eat pasta Alfredo with extra cheese, or a bacon double cheeseburger with \u201cfries\u201d (hello\u2026they don\u2019t actually bake them, I hope you know this!) or barbecued beef short ribs. They got this calories things all wrong, babe, ALL WRONG!<\/p>\n

There are so many different ways to fry pork and even if you want to limit it to just breaded fried pork, there are still so many different ways. The first is just slice the pork about half an inch thick, season it with salt and pepper, roll it in all the goodies: flour, beaten egg and coat with Panko bread crumb (see NOTE #1), then fry. This type requires a very, very tender pork such as Kurobuta pork or black hog, which is the same breed as\u00a0Berkshire pig.<\/p>\n

The straightforward pork cutlet is still divided in two types, the pork filet (Hire) and the pork loin (Roosu). These are the types that a very famous restaurant chain that is popping up all over Japan and many other countries named \u201cMaisen\u201d is serving. They serve a tender breaded fried pork, so tender you can cut it with chopsticks, believe it or not. I ate at Maisen almost every time that I was in Tokyo, and now they\u2019ve opened two in Bangkok.<\/p>\n

The other fancy way of frying the breaded pork is to slice and pound the pork until it becomes very thin, like ham for a sandwich. I\u2019m talking about 1\/8-1\/16 of an inch thin, not the usual quarter inch thin here. Then roll them up in many layers. This way many other flavor enhancers can be added such as cheese, shiso leaves, miso, etc., \u00a0before the pork roll up goes into the flour, eggs and Panko bread crumbs. They would call it mille-feuille Tonkatsu.<\/p>\n

I have found a restaurant called \u201cKagura<\/a>\u201d\u00a0in Torrance, California, who serves this type of Tonkatsu. If you follow me on my Facebook page<\/a>\u00a0or my Instagram<\/a>, you’ve probably seen the pictures of the Tonkatsu already. So I didn\u2019t really search for it in Tokyo because Kagura is THAT good.<\/p>\n

So, why am I blabbing about all of these Tonkasu, then?<\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

Because I just want to point it out that Katsukichi is really unique, even to the Japanese cuisine. Their Tonkasu is neither thick cut nor mille-feuille style. On top of it, the Tonkasu at Katsukichi doesn\u2019t even need any sauce the same way others do.<\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

Tonkasu sauce is usually sold pre-made in a bottle at a Japanese grocery store, and some regular supermarkets carry it. If you want a quick Tonkasu sauce when you don\u2019t have a bottle at home, you just have to mix ketchup with Worcester sauce and soy sauce, and add a bit of mustard into the mix, then you’ll get something quite similar.<\/p>\n

Actually, there is much more to Tonkasu sauce than my simplified version. Some chefs use the demi-glaze, some don\u2019t, some would use lemon juice, some would add allspice, etc. Each Tonkatsu restaurant has their own sauce, but Katsukichi proclaims, \u201cMost restaurants usually need sauce for pork cutlet, but here at “KATSUKICHI\u201d you don’t need sauce for pork cutlet. It’s delicious!!” That\u2019s quite bold for this type of dish.<\/p>\n

So what do they serve there?<\/p>\n

Tonkatsu at Katsukichi is quite thin but sandwiches some interesting fillings in the middle. There is a wide variety of fillings, but I couldn\u2019t read the Japanese, and the English menu only had 10 choices, of which I tried about five. Number 11 and 12 on the menu are regular pork cutlet.<\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

This restaurant seats about 18-20 people at the most in the downstairs section but they have the upstairs room for a large group too. They also have a sign saying no cellphones, and there is an old lady waitress who\u2019s the cellphone police, so be careful! I took photos with much difficulty because I had to wait until she couldn\u2019t see that I was snapping a picture.<\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

I found this restaurant on the last trip I took back in 2012, but I didn\u2019t get good pictures. This time, I managed to get enough good one so you can see the dishes.\u00a0There is a waiter there who has such a vivid memory. He remembered me TWO years later, amazing!<\/p>\n

I had tried the Miso, Shiso, Cheese, Kaki (Oyster) and Natto. My favorite is the oyster (Kaki) and Miso but all of them are so good. I wish I could try more but I will definitely try this place again next time.<\/p>\n

WHERE:<\/strong> Katsukichi
\n1-21-12 Asakusa,\u00a0Taito-Ku, Tokyo
\nTel: 03-38441-2277
\nhttp:\/\/asakusa-katsukichi.gourmet.coocan.jp\/top.html#<\/p>\n

WHEN:<\/strong>
\nFriday – Wednesday CLOSE ON THURSDAY
\nLunch 11:00am – 14:30pm (Last order 14:00)
\nDinner 5:00pm – 9:00pm (Las order 8:30pm)<\/p>\n

WHAT:<\/strong> Tonkatsu, what else?<\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Katsukichi<\/a><\/p>\n

NOTE #1 Panko is the flaky bread crumbs used in Japanese cuisine. How special is this? Panko is made from very airy bread that is baked by passing an electric current through the dough without using heat, hence there is no crust before they crumble it. The crumbs would of course have an airier texture than Italian bread crumbs or most Western bread crumbs and the result is less oil absorbed and a much lighter coating.<\/p>\n

Preview: the next post will be my food adventure in Singapore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will be the last post about my Japanese food adventures on my trip there. For those of you who like my Thai recipes, stay put. I am still on many trips at this time of a year but should be back in my kitchen for a little bit. Yes, I get to stay at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,9,30,11,94,79,17,19,107],"tags":[3,31,14,80,254,21,41,309],"class_list":["post-2731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clicking-away","category-comfort-food","category-deep-fried","category-dinner","category-in-the-restaurant","category-japanese","category-lunch","category-pork","category-tokyo","tag-asian","tag-deep-fried","tag-food","tag-japanese-food","tag-restaurant","tag-rice","tag-salad","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highheelgourmet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}