In Downtown Columbus, Tonkatsu Done Right
In food news, The Mochi Shop opens this weekend, and Dayou International Market adds a Chinese food vendor.
Our First Look at Osaka Ton Katsu on South High
By Bethia Woolf
In Japan, it’s common for restaurants to specialize and excel at a single dish, whether it’s sushi, a particular style of ramen, okonomiyaki or tonkatsu. Columbus has several restaurants dedicated to sushi and ramen, but now the city has its first dedicated tonkatsu restaurant. Spoiler alert: It’s really good.
If you’re not familiar with Japanese tonkatsu, it's a pork cutlet that’s pounded, panko-breaded and deep-fried; it’s typically served with shredded cabbage, rice and a sweet tonkatsu sauce. It’s a favorite dish of married couple Eiko and Coz Sakamoto, who decided to open a Downtown restaurant showcasing it. They found a small space near the Columbus Commons at 194 S. High St. (formerly home to Oshio Station) and transformed it into their own, calling it Osaka Ton Katsu.
Eiko and her husband met in college in Oregon and had been living in Japan until recently. She is originally from Osaka, while Coz hails from Kagoshima Prefecture, known for its prized black "Kurobuta" pork. The couple moved back to the U.S. last year to fulfill their dream of opening a restaurant together and sharing authentic Japanese cuisine with an American audience. Another reason they chose to focus on tonkatsu was the growing popularity of the dish among foreign visitors to Japan. They were also encouraged to discover they could source high-quality Japanese panko in Ohio.
Osaka Ton Katsu opened last week and we heard about it thanks to a thread on the Columbus subreddit. As lovers of Japanese cuisine, we were interested but didn’t let ourselves get too excited—until we tried it.
This was the real deal: perfectly crispy pork cutlets, freshly steamed rice, housemade pickles, wafer-thin shredded cabbage.
Having lost some of our go-to Japanese restaurants as their chefs reached retirement age (like Kihachi and Ba Sho), it’s fantastic to have some new Japanese chefs making Columbus home.
Osaka Ton Katsu’s focused menu offers several variations of pork or chicken katsu, as well as two other dishes based on tonkatsu. The first is katsudon, which features cutlets served over rice with fluffy eggs; the second is katsu curry, which pairs Japanese curry with tonkatsu. Portion sizes range from two to three cutlets, with entrée prices between $10 and $16.
The restaurant itself is small, with around 10 indoor seats and a couple of two tops outside. To enjoy your tonkatsu at the height of its crispiness, Eiko recommends dining in rather than getting your cutlet to go.
The care taken in preparation and presentation is evident. The katsu is served on a small rack—common in Japan—to prevent the bottom from getting soggy, and housemade pickles accompany the dish. We especially enjoyed the miso katsudon, which comes with a less-sweet sauce than traditional tonkatsu sauce; the same goes for the sesame dipping sauce served with the oroshi katsu tei. (Short for teishoku, tei refers to “set meals” commonly found in Japanese restaurants.)
In addition to the cutlet-based dishes, Osaka Ton Katsu offers six varieties of onigiri (rice balls with meat or fish fillings)—perfect for snacking—as well as two soups, miso and tonjiru. As a fan of the Japanese TV series “Midnight Diner,” I was especially excited to see tonjiru make an appearance in Columbus.
We expect Osaka Ton Katsu to be a popular addition to Columbus’ Downtown dining scene and a destination for Japanese food lovers in Central Ohio. The prices are reasonable given the quality of ingredients and preparation, making it well worth finding a parking spot Downtown.
Find It:
194 S. High St., Downtown, 614-465-7709
Hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Friday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; closed Sunday
Note: The menu does not currently offer any vegetarian options.
Housekeeping
A reminder that next week we’re giving away one pair of tickets to a soft opening event for Isla, the forthcoming tasting menu restaurant from chef Andrew Smith and his wife, Devoney Mills. All paid subscribers to the Foodletter will be eligible. Upgrade your subscription today!
Notes
Around the Columbus Food & Drink Scene
The Mochi Shop, which specializes in chewy mochi doughnuts, celebrates its grand opening on Sunday, March 23, at 999 Bethel Road, Ste. D. The first 50 customers in the door get a free mochi. It’s the first brick-and-mortar shop for Kaori Becker, a local cooking instructor and the author of “Mochi Magic.” The new location is a joint venture with Coffee Coin, which will offer coffee and espresso drinks.
The food court at Dayou International Market (885 Bethel Road) recently welcomed a new Chinese food stall called Ji Bei Chuan Fish Maw Rice Noodles. The New York-based vendor specializes is a chicken soup featuring fish maw, the swim bladder of a fish, which is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. The vendor also offers other soups, rice dishes and noodle dishes. (Last fall, we wrote about another of Dayou’s food court eateries: Kamil’s Uyghur Cuisine.)
Upper Arlington’s The Original Goodie Shop (2116 Tremont Center) is hosting a tasting event on April 5, with three time slots to choose from between noon and 3 p.m. It’s a great chance discover new goodies, rediscover old ones and to check out the Upper Arlington business’ recent expansion. Tickets are $5. Click here to reserve your spot.