JAPANESE — WITH CHEESE
A restaurant in Newmarket, puts crumbs on its chicken, pork, prawns and cold mashed potato. Kim Knight eats it all. With cheese.
Recently, a colleague and I were discussing “lost” foods — the things we used to eat that no longer appear on menus or home dinner plates. My list was meaty, fried and coated in crumbs. Crumbed sausages. Crumbed schnitzel. Something my dad called Swiss roll and my mum called Spanish slice — a swirly disc of beef mince, extruded sausage and frozen mixed veges, with a crispy crumbed exterior. Sounds dreadful, but my inner 9-year-old recalls it tasted pretty great slathered in tomato sauce with a scoop of mashed spud on the side.
The commonality between those dishes was, of course, cost. My child-bride mother and Air Force recruit father made the best out of the worst until, one day, they could afford to feed me steak.
That love of deep-fried crumbs has, however, never left me (witness: lasagne toppers and my 20s) or, apparently, anyone else who is queuing to get into Newmarket’s Katsu Katsu.
The 30-seat restaurant (from the same team behind the very delicious Waku Waku in Remuera) has a fairly singular focus. Its specialty is tonkatsu, a Japanese dish so famous it gets its own page on the Government of Japan’s Public Relations Office website:
“Tonkatsu — the breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet so popular with the masses — was originally one of many Japanese twists on Western recipes imported to Japan, in this case, France’s cotelette de veau ...” writes Katsuya Yamada.
Japanese chefs considered the pan-fried French veal too oily. They looked instead to the crisp lightness of tempura and, in 1899, Ginza’s Rengatei restaurant put the first deep-fried tonkatsu on the menu. The traditional chateau carrots were swapped for finely sliced raw cabbage and two types of Worcestershire were mixed for saucy tang.
Honour that 125-year-old intent with Katsu Katsu’s tonkatsu “set” — starring 200g of free-range Harmony pork sirloin. It comes with pickles and little dollops of wasabi and a citrussy-hot yuzu kosho.
You can ask for free refills of the rice, cabbage and miso, but I doubt you’ll need them. In these cashstrapped times where two side dishes often double the cost of a so-called main, the set is extremely good value.
A confession. I went to Katsu Katsu twice in one week. On Thursday, I caught up with a friend I hadn’t dined with in years. The food was great, but the best restaurant in the world couldn’t have cut through our epic catch-up.
“You need to sit up at the counter,” said Lisa (who was already on her second visit). “I’m still dreaming of the shuk-shuk sound of the chef’s knife cutting through the crispy crumbed pork fillet.”
And so, two nights later, there I was with a giant, ice-cold handle of grapefruit highball (is this the least elegant cocktail in the world?) watching the kitchen sizzle, drain and chop its way through deep-fried porkchicken-prawn perfection.
The proteins were thick and juicy, the cabbage super fresh and crunchy and no crumb had been left un-crisped.
Spud on the side? Be still, my inner 9-year-old heart. The “potato salad” was a cold, rough mash, mixed with crunchy slivers of cucumber and spring onion. It was topped with oily pops of salmon roe, a light smattering of panko crumb and two shards of deep-fried chicken skin, crisp and sturdy enough to use as spoons. A certain fast food franchise might want to up its game — this is a fried chicken and mashed potato combo to drive across town for, regardless of how long it takes you to find (or get out of) a carpark in Newmarket.
Every second person I know has either just been
— or is about to go — to Japan where, my own experience tells me, they will not eat a dud meal. Restaurants like this will help make re-entry less painful.
On Thursday, my pork loin had just a tiny bit of fat on one edge which gave the bite-down an even more sumptuous texture. On Saturday, I vaguely considered a virtuous bowl of steaming udon but then I ordered the chicken teppan katsu because how much better might this entire experience be with cheese?
I watched 200g of flattened and crumbed chicken thigh hit the hot oil. Then I watched the chef heat a cast metal plate and sprinkle it with cheese. When the two came together under another cloud of cheese I wondered if I should call a cardiologist. On my meal tray, I discovered a flat, metal implement. Its sole purpose was to ensure I could scrape every gooey, stretchy, scrap of hot cheese from the bottom of my teppan plate and into my mouth. Order another highball. The only thing that could justify this level of crispy-cheesy goodness is a hangover.