Update on Fujiki Ningyocho, Tokyo, Japan
So I was in Tokyo for a few days at the start of my current travels and went back to eat at Fujiki Ningyocho on 17 Oct, 2019. I wanted to eat the tomahawk tonkatsu that I described in my original post below again.
As with all things in life, the only constant is change. The ownership of the restaurant appears to have changed and while the restaurant still serves tonkatsu, there have been changes to the dish. The restaurant still serves the tomahawk tonkatsu, but it appears that the pork they use has changed from a premium to a more common breed. Do not get me wrong, the tonkatsu served was still good to eat, but it's not what it was before.
There are also English menus available for some of the seasonal dishes, whereas before, all the menus were in Japanese. The price has also dropped a few hundred yen and the weight of the tonkatsu has decreased too, which reinforces my belief that a more common pork breed is being used for the dish.
Also changed is the how the dish is served. No more knife and fork! The dish is presented already cut, like the regular version of tonkatsu served everywhere, obviating the need for a knife and fork needed to eat a whole boned pork rib steak. So you eat the dish with chopsticks.
The condiments have also changed. Whereas before the condiments were spicy, unique, and prepared on-site, the newer owners have opted to use more common (and likely not made on-site) accompaniments to the tonkatsu. Probably the most unfortunate change is the elimination of the yuzu-based condiment that you eat with the tonkatsu (see the original report below). Again, this was a store-made and unique addition to the normal version of the dish that you could not get anywhere else.
Would I still eat there again? If I had never had a tomahawk tonkatsu before, this is still the only place to get this dish and it is well prepared. I would certainly make a trip to this restaurant in that case. Having eaten both versions (the original and new), I would say that while the dish is still unique, it does not warrant another special trip. If I am in the neighborhood, I certainly would eat there again.
Original Review (20181023): Dinner at Fujiki Ningyocho, Tokyo, Japan
Well, it has been a while since I posted on this blog. I had good intentions of posting more often, but…
Since it’s been a while since the last posting, here is (a repeat) of a short introduction to my past travels. I used to travel frequently to Seoul and Japan at least 4 times a year. As you can guess, I have got a lot of airline miles accumulated due to my past frequent travels. Every time I travel to Asia, there is always something new to see or eat. I guess I will eventually post something on the places I have seen, but for now here is a restaurant in Tokyo that I went out of my way to eat at on 11 Oct 2018.
Tokyo is a large city, both in population and area, but it is probably the easiest city to get around in when taking public transport, namely the subways and trains. In the USA, being so car-centric, the question is how far (distance) away or how much time to a destination is by car. In Tokyo, the question is where is the nearest train or subway station, and how far a walk is it from the station?
I originally found out about this Tokyo restaurant through Facebook, specifically through this video by Red DuckPost. Before reading on, I urge you to view the video to see how the dish is prepared since this is not your typical tonkatsu (pork cutlet) dish that you can get in Japan (or anywhere for that matter). Rice, thinly sliced cabbage, and clam soup are always served with (boneless) tonkatsu in Japan. At most tonkatsu restaurants in Japan, the rice and cabbage are refillable for free, but that was not a consideration in this case since the tonkatsu fills you up and leaves little room for anything else in your stomach.
If you look at the picture at the top of this post, you will see something that is usually not found in Japanese restaurants. Can you see what it is? If you said a fork and knife, you were correct. This was the first Japanese food restaurant in Japan I have ever been to where a knife and fork are provided and used. You were also provided chopsticks, but they went unused.
The so called, “tomahawk tonkatsu”, is massive and just as tender as described in the video! As you could guess, I was quite full after eating the whole thing. What is not described in the video are the condiments and small dishes that come when you order this dish. When you eat tonkatsu in Japan, you add a sauce, called to no one’s surprise, tonkatsu sauce. Unlike the bottled versions that you can buy at a Japanese market, tonkatsu sauce is created at each restaurant. So each tonkatsu restaurant has their own “secret recipe” for making their unique tasting version of the sauce.
The other restaurant specific sauce is the sauce that goes on the shredded cabbage. From my experience, the cabbage sauce is usually homemade as was the case at Fujiki. The sauce for the cabbage is, in my opinion, more important that the tonkatsu sauce since the cabbage sauce takes away the rawness of eating the cabbage without it. You can easily eat the tonkatsu with out the sauce, but the cabbage sauce really does add to the overall taste to the dish.
There are condiments that accompany the dish. In this case the restaurant has their own homemade pickles, in Japanese called Tsukemono (つけもの), which are quite commonly served in restaurants in Japan. Fujiki serves two homemade types, one slightly sweet and one spicy (or what passes for spicy in Japan). In fact while I was eating at the counter at the restaurant, the chef was preparing another batch of Tsukemono by slicing (it seems) an endless stream of daikons into thin slices to be pickled. In addition to the usual salt and hot mustard condiments, Fujiki makes a yuzu-based (yuzu is a citrus, similar to lemon) condiment that I have never had before. The yuzu condiment is spicy and very tasty!
Usually when I am in Japan, people think I am Japanese until I start speaking English to tell them that I do not speak Japanese. And as usual, we are able to communicate with each other despite the language differences. So when I was asked what I wanted to eat that day from the (Japanese-only) menu, I pulled out my cell phone and showed the server pictures of the tomahawk tonkatsu. As soon as I did that, the server said, “Facebook!”. I nodded and the order was given to the cook.
I was asked where I was from (California) and how I found out about the restaurant (Facebook). I found out that the people running the restaurant that day (not the same as in the video) knew about the posting on Facebook, but had never seen it. So I used my mobile phone to play the video for the person cooking and the person serving that day. The cook and the server stopped what they were doing and watched the video on my phone. It was interesting to see their reaction to the video of what they were going to serve me for dinner.
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| Fujiki Ningyocho Restaurant, Tokyo, Japan |
As a final set of comments, restaurant (and other place) names are not always written and displayed in English, and the address system is different in Japan. Map applications are great at finding places, but you still need verify the name and address before walking in. Japanese house addresses are based upon when the structure was built, and are not numbered consecutively as they are in the USA, which complicates finding a place using just the address. So I always copy the Japanese name and address (both hiragana and katakana (Japanese phonetic writing systems)), and kanji (adopted Chinese characters), as well as the English when available. The name written on the sign board for the restaurant is usually also highly stylized; think of it as a cursive form of the kanji, hiragana, or katakana. So you sometimes have to use your pattern imagination to match the "cursive" form to the standard written characters. It sometimes takes a while for me to "match" the stylized written name to the standard characters.
Name:
- Fujiki Ningyocho
- 富士喜 人形町 (富士㐂 (フジキ))
- 1-5-14 Nihonbashi Ningyocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
- 東京都中央区日本橋人形町1-5-14
- 3 min walk from Ningyocho Station (H13/A14) Exit A6 (elevator exit only). Accessible from the Tokyo Metro Hibiya and Toei Asakusa subway lines.
- 3 min walk from Suitengumae Station (Z10) Exit 8. Accessible from the Tokyo Metro Hanzomon Line subway line.
- Lunch: 11:30-15:30.
- Dinner: 17:00-22:00.
- Order: 当店名物 骨付ロースとんかつ
330gm300gm¥1,980¥1,700 (or show them a picture!). Price is accurate as of the visit date,11 Oct 201817 Oct 2019.
- Plan your subway trip using Navitime:
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- Fujiki Ningyocho (富士喜 人形町 (富士㐂 (フジキ))) (Japanese):
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