Passionate About Restaurants

Destination Dishes: Tonkastsu at Katsu-Hama

By Elizabeth S. Bennett

The Japanese have a strong commitment to their deep fryers. In a country known for its healthful diet, breaded and oil-cooked vegetables, meats and fish turn up with surprising regularity.

Tonkatsu is a super-crisp deep-fried breaded pork or chicken cutlet that can be found all over Japan (it's a common sandwich filling) and on many New York menus. But only one restaurant here, Katsu-Hama, gives the dish the TLC it deserves.

An ideal tonkatsu preparation offers a balance of many flavors and textures--savory, sweet, tangy, spicy, crispy, hot and cool. At Katsu-Hama, this flavor parade begins with a panko-crusted pork tenderloin, fried to a crackling crisp and sliced into several pieces. The katsu (a shortened version of the Japanese translation of "cutlet") is served on an adorable cooling rack and is accompanied by a pile of finely shredded cabbage, a lemon wedge and a blob of hot mustard.

To prepare the dipping sauce, your waiter will bring you a corrugated ceramic bowl containing toasted sesame seeds and a wooden pestle. Here's what to do: slowly circle the pestle around the base of the bowl, angled slightly outward with light pressure. After a couple of minutes the sesame will be crushed and wonderfully fragrant.

Pour some of the homemade tonkatsu sauce into the bowl (less then halfway) and stir. The thick liquid, which resembles a barbecue sauce, is a sweet and sour blend of tomatoes, apples, herbs and spices with more than a whiff of Worcestershire sauce. Add some mustard to the sauce for a subdued heat. Finally, squeeze the lemon over the cutlet and garnish the cabbage with the sesame-based salad dressing. Now it's time to eat. This may not be refined food, but it is delicious.

Atmosphere: Katsu-Hama's decor is casual, plain and uninspired, but the aesthetic is reminiscent of many restaurants in Japan.

Notes: The restaurant is situated at the back of a Japanese takeout storefront, so just walk on through to the back. Chicken is a very good substitute for pork. Katsu-Hama serves draft Japanese lager in icy-cold mugs. It is the perfect pairing with tonkatsu.

Katsu-Hama
11 East 47th Street
(between 5th and Madison Avenues)
New York, NY
Phone: 212-758-5909

Elizabeth Bennett is a freelance writer living in New York City.