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| - It is with great sadness that I have to give them 3 stars, but I have to stick to my guns and rate the restaurants based on food.
I am passionate about Tonkatsu. Please...don't confuse this with tonkOtsu as in Monta ramen. Ton means pig. KAtsu is something fried with panko. KOtsu is bone as in pork bone broth you make Ramen out of, so please get it straight. Katsu NOT Kotsu.
When I was in Japan this spring I must have had 3 or 4 tonkatsu meals. Tonkatsu restaurants are ubiquitous there, not quite as many as Ramen ya's or 7 11's, but you won't have any difficulty finding one when you are in the mood for it. Tonkatsu is a very narrow niche, they only serve fried pork loin (rosu katsu), pork filet (hile katsu), and some places may serve fried prawns and such, but that's usually about it. Most places do fried oysters from Fall to spring. Tonkatsu restaurants are somewhat different from other genres like sushi or ramen because people don't/can't make nigiri sushi or ramen from scratch at home, but tokatsu is not very difficult to cook at home. Then how come tonkatsu restaurants are so popular? Well...it's because they tend to be cheap, and it's a mess to make at home with deep frying and all, but the most important factor is that SOMEHOW....it tastes so much better when the pros do it. It's just pork, salt/pepper, egg, flour, and panko deep fried, but I just can't make them like they do in Tokatsu restaurants, that's why I go out to Wako, Saboten, Maisen, etc, with their soft/crispy fried panko layer, but when you sink your teeth into it it oozes with all that nice pork fat juice, that's why! Somehow it doesn't turn out like that at home.
As I have been saying for years that Vegas needs a tonkatsu place, I was ecstatic to hear that Kiyoshi opened. it's in the SE corner of Jones and Robindale and it is a cozy clean place with great friendly service.
The menu was a bit busier than I liked but seemed legit and there was rosu katsu as I wanted. You go to Tonkatsu place, you get rosu katsu. Tonkatsu restaurants live or die with rosu katsu.
Each table has a sesame grinder and a pot of tonkatsu sauce. You grind as much sesame you want and add a tonkatsu sauce to make your sesame flavored sauce.
Rosu katsu set looked authentic and promising. What didn't...was the katsu itself. It looked a little too brown, dry, and the outer panko layer has separated from the meat and fell apart as it was picked up. It tasted dry and I could not enjoy any of the juicy pork fat as I bit into it. It's like going to a Ramen place and having a broth that was tasteless with floppy overcooked noodle.
As I mentioned earlier, it's not hard to cook your own tonkatsu. In order for me to go and pay money for it, it has to be better, MUCH better than what I can make at home and this wasn't the case. I'm hoping that perhaps mine was a flop. But the appeal of eating pork/tonkatsu is in the fat and this particular rosu katsu was not fatty/juicy enough, partially due to overcooking. I would highly recommend them to keep on working at it until when cut into katsu, a nice juicy pork fat flows out and that meat is ever so slighlty pink. In japan they use "mukin" pork where there is no concern for parasites so some tonkatsu places serve their katsu pretty pinkish. Doing so in the U.S. probably won't fly, but it certainly does NOT need to be overcooked as they did.
This place has potential, but they need some work on their katsu, perhaps a lot more than "some". I will visit again and hope to see something that doesn't shame their existence as a tonkatsu-ya. Until then....I'll keep cooking tonkatsu at home.
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