The kanji for Uokin Izakaya actually stands for Goldfish. Goldfish seems to be a very popular name for Japanese izakaya establishments and I’ve had tremendously good luck with them. My favorite izakaya in the Pacific Northwest is also coincidentally named Goldfish; in Japanese kanji it means the same thing but it is instead pronounced as Kingyo and located in Vancouver, BC. This has nothing to do with the name (or how cute I find it) but Uokin in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo also happens to be my favorite izakaya in Japan! Looks like I had better search out Goldfish-themed restaurants wherever I go in the future!

Uokin is a very popular but small chain of izakaya restaurants in Japan. It is nowhere near as large or commercial as Watami or Doma Doma but the quality is much higher and closer to an independent restaurant, with some very unique offerings. They focus on seafood and use the very freshest produce to create simple but refreshingly delectable small plates which pair very well with alcohol.

We started off with a small platter of grilled salt and pepper pork chop cubes with a tangy and very appetizing Dijon mustard dipping sauce. The food at Uokin is relatively simple but absolutely delicious. There’s no gimmick here; just very fresh produce, treated in the way best suited to it. Although simple, some of the flavor combinations still managed to surprise me in a good way. In this case, the Dijon mustard dipping sauce was really amazing and complemented the perfectly grilled, slightly fatty pork very well.

This was the only dish that I hated at Uokin, quite possibly making it up to the most detestable food I’ve ever eaten in my life. What a strong statement but I’m hardly exaggerating. This was kujira, whale meat! I know I’m bordering on hypocrisy here by refusing to eat whale meat when I relish other meats such as pork, beef, chicken and so on but a whale just seems so much more sentient, endangered and precious than the common chicken and pork that are bred for the table. Left to my own devices, I would never order this detestable food but our Japanese hosts insisted multiple times that we had to at least try it and so we relented eventually. I had one small bite and the fishy smell was horrifyingly overpowering. I have no idea if Uokin is just inept at preparing whale meat or if whale meat in general is just very strongly fish-flavored. It tasted of rotting flesh that came from the sea and I don’t think it is just my embellished imagination at work here.

Moving on… this was simply delightful. Katsuo or bonito, pressed sushi. I’ve eaten pressed sushi many times but this was just that slightly more unique because of the added piece of konbu kelp on top of the raw fish. It added an extra dimension of taste and texture to an otherwise simple but delicious dish.

Uokin really excels at their seafood (with the exception of whale meat!) and this was no exception. Freshest possible yellowtail sashimi drizzled with yuzu citrus ponzu sauce and some kind of pesto. This will make you want to order that one, more pint of beer.

 Dashimaki, savory Japanese rolled omelette made with dashi broth. Typically velvety and juicy but Uokin ups the tastiness quotient by including a gift of mentaiko fish roe in the center. Decadent and yet comfort food at its best. I would have been happy with just a bowl of rice with this.

I can’t remember the exact name of this dish but it was based on katsuo bonito. Bonito sashimi is not really common outside of Japan so we really indulged as much as we could, particularly since June is also the season for bonito This was a fresh, refreshing yet strongly flavored salad so that you can easily pair it with your favorite beer. A mouthful of fresh bonito with garlic chips, shiso, onions and a swig of beer? Match made in heaven.

 Yakisoba, stir fried Japanese noodles with a sweet-savory sauce mainly made of Worcestershire sauce and sprinkled with bonito flakes. This was ordered towards the end of the meal which is quite typical of a Japanese izakaya session. After lots of alcohol, they start craving for carbohydrates while I begin craving for them right at the beginning of the meal!

Fried cheese and buttered garlic toasts with honey lemon! This can get very addictive! I’m so tempted to make some right now just looking at the photo… it doesn’t seem too difficult. Breaded deep fried mozzarella cheese cubes with buttered garlic toasts and a dip of literally just honey and lemon bits. Simple but astonishingly addictive.

Goya chanpuru, an Okinawan stir-fry dish of goya a type of bittergourd with spam, tofu cubes and egg and topped with katsuobushi. Japanese bittergourd is kind of different from Chinese bittergourd. It has a more ridged surface, dark forest-green instead of the light pastel-green of Chinese bittergourd and tastes more bitter but goya chanpuru is a really tasty dish when done right.

Sudachi sour. The first of many drinks but the lighting was so dim that I gave up on taking photos. Sudachi is a type of Japanese citrus, closest to lime but with a stronger fragrance. Sugar syrup, sudachi, shochu and club soda. Although each dish is not really difficult to recreate, the allure of an izakaya is really the atmosphere and convenience of being able to sample multiple dishes at very affordable prices.

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This is why I love traveling in Japan. I regularly have my mind blown every 3 hours or so in Japan. If you live in a country with a train system, have you ever seen staff wiping down the COLUMNS in a subway station?

I’ve lived for more than a decade in a country where most people use the subway system as their primary mode of transport and I have never, ever seen anyone wiping down the walls. Sure, sweeping and mopping occurs fairly often in a clean country like Singapore but wiping down the walls?? Reaching all the way up to the top of the pillars and wiping it clean vigorously? Doing it with clinical precision and utmost concentration? Only happens in Japan.

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Not all food in Japan is healthy. In fact, not all food in Japan have any sort of nutritional value. This post will showcase quite a number of nutritionally-deficient food that I found to my heart’s delight in Japan. I have a serious addiction to Calpis. I can’t resist anything that has Calpis in it. Shown above is a can of Calpis sour and a Calpis mushipan also known as steamed bun. The first taste will send you reeling in horror. It’s like eating Jolly Ranchers flavored bread!!! But being the Calpis addict that I am, I ate every bite.

Pardon the poor lighting. This was an impulse buy during a lunch break and hence, the photo was taken in the backroom of the ramen-ya I worked at which was not too unlike a dungeon. Notice my proximity to the trash bin. Anyway, I also have a serious addiction to Japanese candy. From top to bottom; sudachi or Japanese lime “juicy” candy (just thinking about the juice makes my teeth ache now, it was very sour), Calpis chews (notice the ongoing theme here), lemon and ginger throat lozenges and lemon and salt lozenges. Lemon and salt was odd.

Also because I’m a glutton for punishment, I went back the next day and got another stick of sudachi soda candy.

Late night junk food. Goodies from a nearby bakery called Shirotane in Akasaka-Mitsuke. Left to right; Japanese cheesecake, strawberry shortcake, caramel pudding.

Another late night junk food binge. Asahi beer, yet another Calpis sour and Belgian white beer. Of course, one vice is not enough, I need to indulge two at one go. Strawberry shortcake and a choux pastry from the basement food hall of a department store.

Random candy run during lunch break. I had to buy that peach candy because his face was just that obnoxious. In Japan, kimo-kawaii (which means a disgusting/gross sort of cuteness) has a strange sort of appeal… there’s a whole range of disgusting characters on candy packaging that is supposed to induce you into buying them. As evidenced, I fell for it. Next to it is the much tamer and tastier Mitsuya Cider candy.

Another junk food run during work, but this was slightly healthier. Kind of. Morinaga milk pudding! Really yummy and milky. This was one of many that I consumed during the course of two months.

There’s a line of sweets called Uchi Cafe Sweets at most convenience stores in Japan and they are a pretty good bet if you are looking for a quick, sweet fix. Uchi Cafe Sweets’ cheesecake. This was good but the chocolate eclair was so much tastier!

Uchi Cafe Sweets mini chocolate eclairs. So, so good! Sweet chocolate, thin choux pastry skin and cool, custard cream. It was really surprisingly good for 300 yen.

There’s something to be said for living so close to a good bakery. Like, finding the shortcut to diabetes. Again, Shirotane in Akasaka. Hazelnut chocolate cake and french cheesecakes which tasted like cold blocks of lemony cream cheese. I think I need to schedule an appointment with my family doctor as soon as possible.

A strange pastry that I picked up at a cafe/bakery in Jiyugaoka 自由が丘, a town famous for its sweets. Curiously named “Campagne“, I bought it because I didn’t know what it was and it looked like a fluffy cloud of cream and dough. It was indeed like biting down into a substantial cloud of cotton candy. Soft, sweet and fluffy. It was like eating custard cream sandwiched between very fluffy, silver-dollar mini pancakes. I’m too guilt-ridden to continue further, here ends part one of my junk food addiction.

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These beautiful handmade bowls were found on Kappabashi-dori, a famous street in Tokyo known for supplying almost everything you can possibly need in the restaurant trade. Knives, tableware, china, cookware, machines, intricate plastic food samples, chairs, quite seriously, anything that you can even imagine you might need in a restaurant, you’ll find it on this street. Even if you don’t envision yourself working in a restaurant, it’s still pretty fun to shop around for Japanese kitchenware and the prices are rather competitive. However, I had a specific objective in mind – seeking inspiration for the tableware in our ramen shop.

Each store has a catalog that you can request for, although you might not necessarily want to cart it around while shopping. The few catalogs I requested weighed at least ten pounds each which should give you an idea how extensive the selection is.

Some of my favorites. I loved the plate with the squiggles of paint but it was handmade and entirely out of my budget. And that ramen bowl with the naruto whirlpool design was so cute! The simple but classic and totally practical black and white bowls. Random but adorable checkered plate designs. I wanted to bring each one of them back with me… and to be honest, I did end up lugging half of them back to Seattle.

The prettiest cutlery set ever. Handcrafted from wood, incredibly lightweight but so sturdy and well made! The price was also definitely a reflection of how much effort went into making them…

Japanese version of the humble mortar and pestle, most commonly seen at the table in traditional tonkatsu restaurants and used to grind sesame seeds. I love the Japanese sense of combining practicality with aesthetics. Useful and decorative.

When you are feeling tired, stop by Bridge, a New York style minimalistic and sleek coffee shop, for some very good coffee.

Bridge is a really cool concept; it’s not just a coffee shop, it’s also an office space for an interior designing company named Sturdy Style. It was my first time seeing a concept like this and I was just stunned by the sheer common sense of the idea. If you have more than enough space for your office, why not just convert some part of it into a public space showcasing your product?? It’s such a genius idea to best utilize the space.

The back of the coffee shop , with an enclave of people furiously working at their workstations. The concept is really open, bright and trendy. As a customer, you’re invited into their space to look at how they work, flip through their designs and completed projects and basically totally be tempted to hire them the next time you’re thinking of re-designing your home or office. All this while sipping a cup of their very well-brewed coffee. Which you paid for. Simply brilliant.

So while it is a great marketing idea to showcase their design and work in a public concept like this, they also make an extra revenue through the sale of the beverages and food. And it was very, very busy. Having a positive marketing budget for your company! Isn’t that totally smart??

High ceilings, a loft-like atmosphere, good coffee, magazines (sneakily in the form of their work and project materials) make for a very comfortable chill-out spot. They even have a pool table in the back for their employees and/or customers.

The second floor is their semi-secluded meeting room area. Each meeting room is individually-designed and tucked away in its own small corner. Having their office open like that allows more people, and not just their clients, to view the proof of their creativity and design.

Random moose sighting on the second floor.

More likely than not, you’ll also leave having voluntarily paid US$5 for a glimpse of their wonderfully creative office space.

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This was the line that formed outside Motenashi Kuroki thirty minutes before opening so my recommendation would be to get there early. Kuroki is one of my favorite ramen in Tokyo because of the complexity of its shio ramen broth. I’m not a ramen blogger by any means, which is why I rave about almost every ramen shop that I do blog about. If I bothered to take more than two photos of it and actually wrote a post on it, I most likely liked it. And I loved Kuroki.

Whenever I look through my pictures of ramen that I’ve eaten in Japan, I have this irrepressible urge to move there immediately. Sure, ramen in America is slowly but surely increasing in popularity but it would be another fifty years before it will ever reach the standards in Japan. There are numerous reasons why some of the most mindblowing ramen in Japan can never be re-created in other countries. Many people say it is the water but most of the time, that’s utter rubbish. Did you know that water in Seattle is actually softer than water in Tokyo? And I can most assuredly tell you that ramen in Tokyo is pretty amazing. A more important reason than water would be the availability of ingredients. Ramen is a sacred art in Japan, whole economies are built around it. All right, this may be a slight exaggeration but in truth, there are hundreds of varieties of kelp, fish flakes, soy sauce and oils in Japan that cater mostly to the ramen industry. This lack of variety is one of the main reasons why a bowl like Kuroki can only be found in Japan.

Very erratic hours of operation. When it is a master-and-apprentice two-man show, prep for ramen can really take a toll on you. Kuroki only serves two types of ramen – shio and miso.

Tokusei Shio Soba 特製塩そば. Salt-based ramen with all the toppings, in this case, pork, egg, white onions, wontons, bamboo shoots and vegetables.

A beautiful bowl of ramen. Is this not like art? I like this art a lot better than molecular apple caviar with banana foam.

I think most people new to ramen begin their love affair with fatty, rich tonkotsu ramen which makes a big impression from the start. But this ramen relationship is a little like wine appreciation; the more you eat it, the more you’ll be able to appreciate a wider range of flavors. Lighter, more mellow flavors like this bowl of Kuroki that is a subtle mix of chicken stock and dashi with very strong notes of niboshi and maybe saba. The chashu pork slices are an acquired taste. They are thick-cut, with bite, and serve as a point of contrast to the light broth. The chashu is not my personal favorite but many other people have raved about it and it does complement the broth but unfortunately, I like my ramen chashu tender and well-marinated. Other than that, the handmade noodles, tender soft-boiled egg, homemade wonton and other toppings were nothing short of magical.

ごちそうさまでした。Thank you for this delicious meal.

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July 5, 2012. Happy Birthday, Pumba. Love forever, Mommy. 

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三ツ矢堂製麺 Mitsuyado Seimen came very, very highly recommended by many people. It was so highly recommended that someone I know was actually considering to open a franchise branch in Taiwan. Hence, we trooped off to taste it in what pockets of time we had between training and work. I wish I had snapped more pictures but it was late and I was half-asleep on my feet. But what few pictures I did take were enough to remind me of what I thought of it. On a side note, the location cracked me up. The sign says in Japanese, “Here is Tsukemen!!” Maybe I just have a warped sense of humor…

Tsukemen or dipping noodles are all the rage in Japan right now. It’s a fairly new development on the ramen scene and many of this year’s ramen champions are tsukemen specialty shops. This year’s ramen favorites trend towards really heavy, strong flavors such as fish and make ample use of 魚介 fish powders in their soup. For a change of pace, Mitsuyado Seimen breaks away from this mold with a really innovative cheese tsukemen. The nice thing about Mitsuyado Seimen (seimen referring to noodle-making) is that you can really customize your noodles. You get to choose between various different quantities and how warm or chilled you want your noodles to be. The noodles are pretty amazing; one of my favorite tsukemen noodles because it was so bouncy and perfectly al-dente with good bite. In fact, I loved the mochi-mochi noodles and the thick yuzu-flavored tonkotsu broth so much that I think it just might be my second favorite bowl of tsukemen in Tokyo. The one, unfortunate irony is that I truly detested the cheese that came with it. When you are served with your order, you are told to first pour the cheese onto the noodles, mix it well and then dip the cheese-soaked noodles into the broth. But that cheese sauce tastes exactly like the boxed Kraft macaroni and cheese cheese sauce and I can’t really take more than three bites of that. It was quite patently chemical-laden, artificial cheese, which is not all that uncommon in Japan. I think the reason being that cheese was never really part of the typical Japanese diet until recently and it was first introduced to Japan in the least offensive and most convenient way – in the form of a tube. Lots of cheese in Japan tastes of that fake Kraft liquid cheese. I think that if you grew up on this flavor, you would probably love it, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of this cheese tsukemen. So if you grew up on boxed macaroni and cheese and love that artificial cheese flavor, get this, you will absolutely fall in love with it!

As for me… I think I’ll just stick to their divinely classic, regular tsukemen.

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First up, that’s not fondant shaped into a tomato. That really, truly is an actual tomato. The kind that pairs so well with baby spinach greens in a bed of sponge cake and fresh cream. Wait, what?!?!?! Yep, some brilliant, audacious mind actually conceived the idea of incorporating all kinds of vegetables into delectable cakes and desserts with bizarre flavor combinations that actually work. And it’s not just the typical veggie desserts of carrot cake or zucchini bread where the sugar so vastly outweighs the vegetables that most people don’t even realize that there are any in them. These confections invented by Aya Kakisawa will forever redefine the way you look at your vegetables. Pictured above is a tomato and spinach shortcake and a gobo burdock root and chocolate cake.

This creative bakery is located in hip and trendy Nakameguro 中目黒 and is really a must-visit for any foodie traveling to Tokyo. You can’t miss the funky, multi-colored textured exterior of the shop.

In case you are wondering about the unique name, this sign outside the shop explains that the word “potager” is french and refers to the family vegetable garden where love and care is embodied in the vegetables that grow in it. Similarly, “Patisserie Potager” selects only the best local and organic greens to be used in its products.

You can tell that a lot of care and detail have gone into this bakery. The same multi-colored candy theme continues within the shop, reflected in adorable, candy-colored outdoor seating.

There’s an ongoing cute, hapless animal theme throughout the shop which is totally in line with the concept of vegetable-based desserts and probably reflects the preferences of its vegetarian owner. This ridiculously adorable baby cow with a bow wants you to know that milk and sugar are provided for you within the shop.

Notice the small, cute animals guarding the various goodies? Patisserie Potager also offers a huge variety of souvenirs that you can gift to friends and family. Everything in the shop is beautifully packaged, detailed, bright and cheery. I have to say that this bakery hits all the right buttons with me. The concept is one-of-a-kind, the food is top-notch and the branding is flawlessly executed. Once you walk into it, the experience and memory is clearly imprinted onto your mind. Whether you liked it or not, you’d definitely remember it.

Delicately packaged souvenirs of more sturdy desserts like sable cookies, rice crackers and tiny loaves of veggie-based sweetbreads. They even have specialty healthy baby food. And finally, the cakes… the flavor combinations will just blow you away. In a very delightful, sinful way.

Avocado unbaked cheesecake. Japanese leek baked cheesecake. 525yen or USD6.50.

Rucola, or otherwise known as argula, jelly and black sesame with soy milk mousse. Mont blanc in potato cream instead of traditional chestnut cream. I wish I could have tried this.

From left to right; carrot chocolate flan, tomato cake roll, purple asparagus cake roll, grapefruit jelly on radish yogurt mousse, tomato and lemon cream, the ever-popular Japanese mont blanc with tomato and broccoli cheesecake on the far right bottom.

From left to right; mango carrot and coconut mousse, buckwheat chai mousse, carrot chocolate flan, lemon and beet tart and Vichysoisse which apparently is made in the image of a potato soup with a light, parsley gelee.

Finally, we have the tomato and spinach shortcake which is the classic, most popular dessert at Patisserie Potager. And the burdock root chocolate gateau. Each dessert painstakingly takes note of the strength of the vegetable taste, level of sweetness and healthiness. With so much variety, which flavor would you choose?

Unfortunately, I only had room to sample two pieces of cake. And the verdict? Just look at that crumb texture. Fine, light and airy sponge cake. In terms of desserts, there’s no denying that the chef knows her technique well. Amazingly, tomato actually works pretty well in a sweet dessert and the taste of spinach is not particularly strong in the sponge cake. If the tomato and spinach shortcake was a 9 out of 10, the burdock root chocolate gateau was a 7. A heavier, brownie texture with discernible bits of burdock root. It was tasty but burdock root and chocolate was not quite the match in heaven as was the tomato and spinach. The cake part was also a tad dry.

Although it was easy to pretend that you were not really eating a vegetable-based dessert, each time you bit into a piece of tomato or burdock root, you are once again strongly reminded that you are really eating something quite healthy. I love that the chef did not attempt to overwhelm the veggie taste with a ton of cream and sugar. Instead, it is just lightly sweetened and the taste of the vegetables really does shine through. I’ve heard that many people are unable to accept the odd juxtaposition of vegetable and cake but I think it is just a matter of perception. Once you overcome the ingrained mindset that desserts shouldn’t taste of vegetables, I think you will be quite surprised at just how tasty a vegetable dessert can be.

Address:

Patisserie Potager

2-44-9 Kamimeguro Meguro, Tokyo 153-0051, Japan

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Afuri Ramen in Ebisu, Tokyo. Yuzu shouyu ramen, 850 yen/USD10.

I think this makes it into my personal top ten ramen but it might be a ladies’ biased preference for yuzu, the deliciously fragrant Japanese citrus fruit. Without which, this might have been a rather ordinary bowl of shouyu soy sauce based ramen. But with the addition of yuzu, it really was elevated to a comforting yet refreshing bowl of ramen that you could easily drink to the last drop of soup. The toppings of mizuna, a type of Japanese vegetable, thin sticks of marinated bamboo, half a soft-boiled egg, grilled pork, minced onion, a single piece of nori seaweed and yuzu peel pair perfectly with the light soup base and thin noodles; making for a delicate, aesthetically pleasing bowl of ramen quite obviously targeted at the female demographic.

Yuzu shio ramen, 850 yen/USD10. I love a beautifully presented bowl of ramen.

A long time ago, I once naively asked a ramen chef who had trained for years previously in French culinary arts and worked in various restaurants in America and Japan, “isn’t ramen much easier than what you were doing before?” His answer, “ramen is the hardest thing I’ve done so far, making that perfect bowl takes years.”  

I like to think that what he said was a typical chef’s exaggerated response but I get what he means. Creating that perfect balance in a bowl of ramen is incredibly, unimaginably difficult to achieve because there are no boundaries in ramen. And yet, if you have slurped enough bowls, you’ll know there is an undeniable character to ramen, no matter what kind of form it takes. There’s italian-japanese fusion ramen, green curry ramen, mabo tofu ramen and the list goes on but add a little more of one ingredient or lack a certain spice and suddenly, when you are slurping it, you will realize this is not really considered ramen. Or maybe I’m just overthinking this. XD

Back to Afuri Ramen, their first shop is in Ebisu but there are a total of three shops around Tokyo and I liked them enough to slurp another bowl at their Nakameguro 中目黒 location.

Spicy yuzu tsukemen, 880 yen/USD11.

Tsukemen means dipping noodles. You are served the noodles and broth separately and usually, the broth is much thicker and more concentrated than regular ramen. Quite literally, you pick up some noodles, dip them into the broth and slurp! They are really popular during summer because the noodles are served cold, although you can still order an atsu-mori, hot option.

After you are done with your noodles, you can ask for a “soup-wari” which is additional, lighter broth that you can mix into the more concentrating dipping noodle broth and drink it to the last drop! Afuri Ramen serves their soup-wari in a pretty sake bottle.

If you need another reason to visit, coming from a woman’s perspective, their staff wear the cutest pageboy caps! (+_+)

I know I just advocated visiting the first shop of any type of Japanese chain restaurant but in this case, I actually preferred their latest shop in Nakameguro. It’s brand new and spiffy and more importantly, it has a huge back-kitchen where I suspect they make most of their soup and ship it out to the other shops because I definitely did not see any giant vats of soup boiling at their Ebisu branch.

Address:

阿夫利ラーメン中目黒店

上目黒1-23-1

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I’m typing up this post while eating a slice of matcha honey castella cake that I’ve brought back from Tokyo and it is so intensely delicious that it brought up all these strong memories of all the mindblowing food that I’ve eaten on this trip. Only in Japan will you find specialty shops making just that one type of dessert or just one type of ramen or just that one specific type of food, in this case, tonkatsu. Nowhere else in the world will you find so many people so devoted to one thing that they are willing to spend so much time and effort perfecting it and of course, in turn, there’s nowhere else in the world with so many people willing and able to appreciate this singleminded devotion.

Maisen まいせん is a specialty tonkatsu restaurant, devoted to the well-known Japanese breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet. They are so famous that if you ask any Japanese person or consult any type of Japanese guidebook, Maisen will inevitably be listed as one of the most popular destinations for tonkatsu. It is such an established institution in Japan that it even has signs leading from the closest subway station to its honten, the first shop, in Omotesando Hills. The closest subway station being Omotesando.

In Japan, the honten or first shop is pretty important and held in high regard. Usually, the first shop will uphold the old ways of making the food that first propelled it to fame. Subsequent newer shops may employ more operationally efficient methods such as using food from central kitchens or cutting down on some steps in order to churn out orders more quickly. So whenever possible, visit the very first shop! Maisen is so well-known and popular that it has food counters in many department stores around Tokyo and other restaurant locations but the tonkatsu at their first Omotesando location is truly much better than any other place, as evidenced by a disappointing quick meal that I had at one of their other restaurant locations in a mall.

It’s not just the pork cutlet that’s famous, it’s also Maisen’s signature sauces that enhance the taste of their pork cutlet. They have two main sauces – amakuchi and karakuchi  which means sweet and salty respectively. The sweeter tonkatsu sauce is more reminiscent of the common variant of tonkatsu sauce; it’s thick, sweet and slightly tangy. The salty one, however, is an acquired taste. While I liked the taste well enough, it’s the texture that puts me off. It’s watery and does not adhere easily to the pork cutlet. Interestingly enough, it is quite a common practice to categorize Japanese tastebuds into sweet or salty and it is well-known in the Japanese restaurant industry that sweet-flavor inclined restaurant brands are generally more successful. In short, it’s the taste of the masses. As you can see, the salty tonkatsu sauce is in much smaller quantities than the popular sweet sauce.

This is their standard tonkatsu lunch set. If you go during lunch, it is only around 1000 yen which is USD 12. If you go during dinner, the same set in the same quantity is at least twice as expensive. The standard lunch set comes with a pork loin tonkatsu, pickles, grated daikon with bonito flakes and miso soup made with delicious, small clams. Rice and cabbage salad are both refillable. Pork loin is considered the cheaper cut of pork, compared to other cuts like tenderloin and it is usually more fatty.

The breading was flaky and perfectly crispy. The pork, perfectly fried, tender and juicy. It was good, really good…

The set lunch of the day. They only have limited number of sets in a day so if you go late in the day, they might have run out of them already. This was really value for money. It was only 1200 yen which is USD 14 but you get a higher-quality grade of pork tenderloin, a small slice of grilled salmon and nikujaga (homestyle Japanese beef stew), along with the usual pickles, grated radish and miso soup. Honestly, the pork loin cutlet was plenty delicious but the tenderloin was just that slightly more delicious. It was a tad leaner which made for a better ratio of fat with the already deep fried breadcrumb coating. Either way, it’s really hard to go wrong at Maisen Tonkatsu. Just make sure you go to the one at Omotesando Hills!

So what does someone who works in the restaurant industry do on their first day off since landing in Tokyo? Eat some more of course! Freshly grilled mitarashi dango makes me really, really happy! ^_^

And what appears to be the start of a disturbingly regular late-night snack of beer and cake…

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