MaisenMaisen

Jingumae 4-8-5, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Phone +81-33-470-0071

Here’s another fantastic food experience from our Japan trip back in ’07.  Having an insatiable propensity towards pork, I was dying to sample some bona fide tonkatsu in its native surrounds.  We timed our visit to Harajuku with dinner at the Lonely Planet- recommended Maisen, which was apparently one of the top tonkatsu specialists in Tokyo.  Well, it turned out to be one of our best dining highlights, not just in Japan, but ever!  EVER, I tells ya.

That is, until we had found the f##ker.  We spent hours trying to find the joint but literally kept walking around in circles in Groundhog Day fashion.  Hey Mel, haven’t we already seen that freaky goth with blue hair and Hello Kitty backpack twice already?? The Lonely Planet “map” didn’t help, nor did our attempted pronunciation of Maisen when we asked hipster Harajuku shopkeepers for directions.  We thought it was pronounced French-style, as in La Maisen Derriere haw haw haw, but actually we had to inflect the “i”, as in my-zen.

We’d nearly given up but thought we’ll give it one more round and, there, at the end of a side street that we had somehow missed the previous six friggin’ times we’d walked past, emerged Tokyo’s venerable House of Hog.

Maisen occupied a pre-World War II public bathhouse, and the building itself was HUGE.  There was a little takeaway section on the outside where one could purchase tonkatsu bento boxes.  Just inside the entrance they had a small shop and meet and greet area, selling things like their delectable range of tonkatsu sauces.  We signalled our intentions to the host and, after a short wait, was led through a bar section with a long wooden counter into the cavernous main dining room.  You could definitely see elements of Maisen’s previous incarnation.  The room was dated but it was very pleasant, comfortable and casually retro.

Like the best steakhouses, the tables were set with all manner of condiments to accompany the bill of fare, including the aforementioned tonkatsu sauces.  This sauce was simply devastating and completely bends the stuff you get in a tube well and truly over the barrel.  No wonder Maisen used to be a bathhouse, because I wanted to bathe in a tub of this sauce.  It’s the sh#t.

We were handed menu’s, which helpfully had pictures depicting the six or so different types of pork you could have but unhelpfully they all looked exactly identical to each other.  Doh!  We couldn’t read Japanese so had to go by the different prices, choosing one which we hoped was something between the best cut and the house cut.

We weren’t disappointed!  Just look at that perfectly fried tonkatsu in the first pic, with  bread crumbs so well preserved through the frying process that it made the tonkatsu look like a fluffy pillow.  It rested on a metal rack that ensured that any excess oil dripped onto the plate, though the tonkatsu was already very well drained.  The meat was truly sublime, crunchy on the outside, moist and tender on the inside, especially when matched to the fruity tonkatsu sauce and plain white rice.  Maisen uses pork from the black hair pig, which has a moist, juicy texture and subtle yet flavoursome taste.  It shat all over previous tonkatsu that I’ve eaten before, and have eaten since.  The shredded raw cabbage was a perfect foil for the richness of the meat, and what’s more, it was all you can eat!  Dainty mama-sans roamed the floor, replenishing cabbage with cheery dispositions.

The tonkatsu set also came with miso soup and a refreshing tofu salad dish, but really they were mere backdrops to the magnificence of the tonkatsu.

Alas, the meal eventually had to end, and we were so saddened to leave.  It was a memorable meal and one that I knew there and then would forever ruin tonkatsu for me when I came home *sniffle*