Udon? Check. Sushi? Check, check, check. Ramen? Check. Yakitori? Check. Next up on our tour of key genres of Japanese cuisine was tonkatsu or katsu. After lunch at Yoshinozushi Honten we had wandered Nihonbashi for a while and then headed to the Yanaka neighbourhood in Taito City where we wandered some more. We then cooled off in our apartment before heading back to Nihonbashi for dinner. Our port of call was a branch of Katsukichi. Founded in 1958, they also have locations in Shibuya, Marunouchi, and Hibiya. In Nihonbashi they are one of the many restaurants located in the Takashiyama S.C building, up on the 6th floor. None of the restaurants have any English signage but it wasn’t very difficult to figure out which the katsu specialist was and we were quickly at our table. Here’s how the meal went.

The Nihonbashi location of Katsukichi—which we were also pointed to by Yukari Sakamoto—is a large and attractive restaurant. There’s some counter seating near the entrance but the restaurant also has quite a few large booths and we were seated at one of these. This was also one of the few restaurants we ate at on this trip that we had managed to get reservations at before we arrived in Japan. They are listed on the reservations site, Tablecheck, and it’s very uncomplicated to make a reservation. Unlike some restaurants on Tablecheck, they don’t require you to select a meal for the entire party at the time of reservation. And so we were able to put together a meal of a number of things that caught our eye on their menu. In this we were helped by our server, who had excellent English and made very good suggestions, preventing us from over-ordering like crazy (though she didn’t prevent us from over-ordering at all).

They have a number of a la carte options—as you can see in the excessive slideshow below—but our server suggested we get the combo platter for three, which she said would be more than enough food and a good variety for our family of four. Alarmed by our attempts to add more dishes to the order, she scaled us down to the combo platter for two and suggested some additional fried things to add to it. We defied her and got a couple of other dishes in addition anyway. The first of these featured marinated mozuku seaweed in a very vinegary dressing. Cold and bracingly acidic, this was not a hit with the entire family as the seaweed is rather slimy. I rather liked it and was happy to eat most of it. Our a la carte order was also a cold dish and also turned out to be quite slimy: deep-fried chicken cutlet in a cold sauce over rice. It was not the chicken that was slimy but the sauce/soup. In this case the source of the texture was probably okra. Again, not universally beloved by the table but I happily ate most of it.

What was universally beloved by the table was everything on the katsu platter. This featured different cuts of pork, vegetables, a number of croquettes (with creamy, shrimp and mince pork fillings), small and massive prawns, and asparagus and other seasonal vegetables. I should note that the picture of the katsu platter in the slideshow shows not just what the platter for two normally comprises but also some of the fried things recommended by our server. Well, all of it was great—and the pork cutlets were particularly great. And, yes, our server was right: it was too much food (we also got regular and shiso rice with the platter). As hard as we tried to finish it all, we had to reluctantly leave a few fried things uneaten. The katsu, by the way, also comes with salad—which you can dress with one of three sauces on the table—and wasabi, mustard and tartar sauce for dipping the cutlets in.

An orange soda and a large beer (very necessary in the heat and humidity) rounded out our order. For a look at everything we ate and drank, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

Service, as I’ve indicated, was very good. Price? The total was 15,240 yen or just about $104. Again, even leaving aside the high quality of the cooking, this is a crazy value when you think of how much a meal for four involving premium pork and seafood would cost in the US. But this was, as I’ve noted before, the pattern with all our meals in Japan. Speaking of high quality, you can read more about their exacting standards on the company’s website. In the US—or India, for that matter—I would be a bit skeptical about such claims, but in Japan these things are taken very seriously.

Okay, what’s next from Tokyo? Ramen, sushi and ramen—in that order. The first two will go up later this week; the third next week.