Tale of Two Katsu

We had heard a lot of great things about Tonki, a restaurant in Meguro that specializes in tonkatsu, a breaded and fried pork cutlet that is very popular in Japan.  They don't use normal batter for the breading, but instead use something called panko, or Japanese bread crumbs. Tonki specializes in tonkatsu; they have been doing this for many many years, and the menu is streamlined into 'fatty' and 'lean' tonkatsu.

Dan and Kevin both decided that they wanted 'fatty' pork.  I decided to go with the 'lean' pork. Well, here is where language problems come in.  Dan ordered for us, and 20 minutes later, we are all sitting with our plates, eating our meat.  Halfway through dinner, the boys started complaining that their meat wasn't fatty enough.  Mine was okay, I said.  Dan took a glance at mine and was extremely jealous about my meat's fine marbling.  I gave him and Kevin a few pieces of mine, and they were so upset.  Turns out that Dan had ordered backwards!  Isn't that funny, I ended up with the fatty meat and they got the lean meat!  How ironic.  :)

Dan was very sad about it, but we all agreed that the katsu was still pretty good.  My favorite was the pork miso soup.  The cabbage was also perfectly shredded and dry, providing a good accompaniment to the pork.  Oh, and the mustard is my favorite -- so spicy!

Here is the assembly line.  We all sit around this 'kitchen' and watch them make and fry the pork.

This man has probably been doing this for 40+ years!

Here is our katsu!  The cabbage is perfect!