Tonkatsu Katsuichi

With its emphasis on seafood and vegetables, raw ingredients, steaming and grilling, Japanese food is one of the world’s most healthy cuisines—but not all of it is. And we’re thankful for that. Because as much as we love sushi, there are times when we crave heavier and less subtle fare, dishes that you’d wash down with beer as opposed to expensive sake or a single-malt whisky. Tonkatsu, thick pork steaks breaded and deep-fried, satisfy such cravings, and Katsuichi serves what might be the most delicious and authentic interpretations of this classic dish in Bangkok. In addition to extra-large servings of pork cutlets, here we also indulge in vegetables bathed in butter, korokke (croquettes) that explode with molten cheese when you bite into them and thick, tangy tonkatsu sauce by the bucketful. The venue itself is pretty similar to the traditional tonkatsu-ya (shops that specialize in tonkatsu) in Japan. The ground floor of the shophouse-wide venue is dark and dank, with counter seating along a long chocolate-brown bar (plus an extra table or two). Upstairs is a small tatami room with another four tables and floor seating. Fried food is the focus here—and the cooks at Katsuichi are masters of the art of deep-frying—but the menu also includes tasty basic “homestyle” dishes like ohitashi, boiled spinach topped with sesame seeds and shavings of dried bonito, and kimpira gobo, shredded burdock root and carrot. For the slightly more adventurous, there is tako wasabi, baby octopus marinated in mirin (sweet rice wine) and wasabi, served in a sake cup, and superb (or at least it was on our last visit) karashi mentaiko, spicy pickled pollack roe. We weren’t so pleased with the samma karoni, Pacific saury boiled in soy sauce, sugar and sake until the bones are soft enough to eat, which resembled fish that comes out of a can. Better are the “bata” (butter) dishes, such as enoki mushrooms that don’t look all that great but taste terrific. Another solid choice at Katsuichi is their zarusoba, a baseball-sized mound of toothsome buckwheat noodles wrapped around a cube of ice served with sauce for dipping. As for the specialty of the house, these are tonkatsu worth oinking over: thick, juicy cuts of pork coated with excellent panko (breadcrumbs) and expertly fried so they’re crisp, light and golden. We prefer the classic versions, but they also served stuffed tonkatsu, like kurobata sisomaki, which is split down the middle and filled with shiso (beefsteak leaves) and umeboshi (pickled Japanese “plum”—it’s actually more closely related to apricots). With the tonkatsu, you have a choice of two cuts—the leaner filet (hirekatsu) or the more fatty loin (roskatsu)—and a choice of two sizes: you want the one with “jo” (i.e., kurobata jo roskatsu), which is bigger and served with a bowl of ground sesame. All come plated with shredded cabbage and a dollop of mustard; more tonkatsu sauce than you’ll ever need is already on your table in a small vat, ready for spooning with a cup-shaped ladle.