NY Eats: Katsu-Hama, tonkatsu specialty restaurant
I love restaurants that specialize in one dish. I love tonkatsu. And I'm always searching for places around MoMA to eat.
Katsu-Hama specializes in tonkatsu, although at dinnertime their menu does expand to include small plates such as Yaki Udon and Kakuni (simmered pork in sweet soy sauce).
I ordered the combination Rosu & Hire Katsu (Rosu = loin roast, Hire = tenderloin). There's a restaurant I like to go to whenever I'm in Tokyo, called Tonki, and I always order Hire since it's leaner. So this time I wanted to try both.
The set up is interesting - a set meal comes with miso and pickles. The server also places a dish of sesame seeds to pound with a wooden stick; you then pour the tonkatsu sauce into the dish. I have never encountered this before! Unfortunately I don't think I was earnest enough with my pounding because my sauce was pretty thin as the sesame seeds were pretty whole.
With the combination plate, you get a 120g piece of Rosu, and a 60g piece of Hire - if you order just Hire you get 2 x 60g pieces. Both were very nicely fried. Moist inside, with a light crust. It's not like Tonki where the crust essentially separates from the meat; here the former enrobes the latter. Like in all "real" tonkatsu restaurants, you also get a mound of shredded cabbage; miso, rice, and cabbage all have unlimited refills. I didn't take advantage, because the cabbage mound was truly enormous and dense. I really liked how they also provide a bottle of sesame dressing with which I dressed the cabbage. I think I prefer the Hire as it was more "pure" pork to me; the Rosu could get chewy and had its characteristic ribbon of fat around an edge.
We ended the dinner with black sesame puu-rin (the Japanese way of saying "pudding," but it's more similar to flan). I love Japanese puu-rin, and black sesame is my favorite flavor for sweets, in general. So I had to have this. It came with a dollop of whipped cream and a bit of red bean ice cream. The puu-rin had a milky flavor, and I enjoyed it. But I wish its black sesame flavor were even more intense, and I missed the caramelized top of traditional puu-rin.
