ONODAWARE: Melt in Your Mouth Tonkatsu: Kagura Restaurant

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Melt in Your Mouth Tonkatsu: Kagura Restaurant

Today Kirk's best friend Ken and his family introduced us to this awesome tonkatsu restaurant in Torrance. Located on Cabrillo and Carson, this little place is a total find in the south bay. Ken, who is a great cook, foodie, and Japanese food connoisseur has great taste in Japanese cuisine. He also told us about this place with white soba noodles. Anyhow, this restaurant's specialty is tonkatsu which is deep fried pork cutlet. I have lots of memories of this japanese dish as my mom would always make it. She would serve it on a perfectly thinly shredded bed of cabbage with that yummy tonkatsu sauce. Kagura definitely knows how to make their tonkatsu. I had the millefeuille black pork tonkatsu dinner set. It comes with a cabbage salad, chawan mushi (a delicate savory egg custard), pork miso soup, rice, and a bunch of little side dishes (sweet bean, mayo tuna, glass noodle salad, and pickles). The rice, soup, and cabbage are all you can eat as well for those bigger appetites. They also give you a Japanese version of a mortar and pestle called a suribachi and surikogi. Inside you have to grind up sesame seeds and can add tonkatsu sauce to this for dipping. My mille-feuille (french for thousand leaf and pronounced "meel-fwee") tonkatsu was thinly sliced pieces of kurobuta pork rolled up lightly breaded, and perfectly fried. It literally melted in my mouth upon biting into it. Extremely succulent...the perfect amount of fattyness in the meat. It was delicious and makes my mouth water just writing about it. The mille-feuille tonkatsu is something I've never seen before and I would recommend to all you tonkatsu lovers, this is a must try restaurant. I'd be down to eat there anytime.