Tonkatsu by Ma Maison

I'm a porky person.

I discovered quite late in life (when I was in my mid thirties) that my favourite meat is actually pork. Bak kwa, ba kut teh, pork chops, I like them all.

Thus it should come as no surprise that I’m particularly susceptible to the temptations of tonkatsu (pork cutlet covered in breadcrumbs and then deep fried). My go-to place for tonkatsu is Tonkichi in Ngee Ann City. I’ve been frequenting that particular restaurant for more than a decade, albeit not on a too-frequent basis due to its rather steep prices.

I first came across tonkatsu in katsu-don form. That is the same bread and deep fried pork cutlet, but in this case, there is the additional step of cooking the cutlet after it has been deep fried with egg and onion in some magical stew and then the whole shebang is served on rice. In the dim and misty stretches of my memory, I no longer remember my first katsu-don; it may or may not have been that unforgettable version from Ginza, a Japanese restaurant near Rosebery Hall, my hostel in London, a good two decades ago. Sadly, that restaurant is long gone.

(Apart from the fantastic katsu-don that they served — which surely used black magic to make it taste so good! —they also served the best mochi I ever had. Mochi is simply rice cake. In Singapore, we have the sweet form dusted with crushed peanut and sugar. In Japan they are also mostly in the sweet form. Now, this version from Ginza is a slab of rice cake, dressed in a layer of miso and I don't know what else and then wrapped with a piece of seaweed, before it is put to the grill. I tell you, it is absolutely tastebud NIRVANA. Sadly, I’ve never been able to find this version of mochi after I left London, both in Singapore and on subsequent trips to Japan.  Up to this day, I console myself with the local version, and occasionally, the Korean versions, like the dukbokkie from Bibigo.)

This is the closest to mochi heaven I could find on the internet:

Don't be fooled by its nondescript look -
it hides heaven in a bite!

If anyone knows what I'm talking about and where to get it, please let me know. I would be eternally grateful.

But I digress. Like the vanished mochi, when I returned to Singapore, I hunted high and low for the perfect katsu-don, not unlike a character in Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen, who travelled the length and breadth of Japan to find the best katsu-don (that book has one of the most seductive descriptions of katsu-don ever; in fact, it might have been it that triggered my memories of Ginza and instigated my own search). Unlike my quest for the Ginza mochi, this one had a happy ending. When I tasted the katsu-don from Tonkichi, I knew that my search had come to an end. And so my katsu-don saga came to a natural pause.

Until recently.

Do you believe in synchronicity?

Well, as it happens, synchronicity has a part to play with my run-in with Tonkatsu by Ma Maison.

About a month ago or so, I dined at Tonkichi with my family, and for the first time, we ordered a katsu curry set. The curry was simply F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S. It was so good that I kept thinking about it even weeks after the meal. Yeah, that good.

So to temporarily satisfy my craving, I took to surfing the internet for reviews of Tonkichi. Quite sad, right?

Anyway, anyone who has surfed before would know how one click always leads to another, and before long, I found myself on a review of tonkatsu by a rather well-known Singaporean lifestyle blogger. This blogger did a comparison of various tonkatsu in Singapore and he rated Tonkatsu by Ma Maison as highly as Tonkichi.

So far so good.

I should also mention that I stumbled upon this blog in Jurong Regional Library, which is located in Jurong East, right behind JCube. If you’re familiar with the geography of Jurong East Central, you could guess what happened next.

After getting enough respite from the tropical weather, I decided to leave the sanctuary of the air-conditioned library and window-shop at Westgate and Jem before heading home. Guess what I found on Level 4 of Westgate? Yeah, an outlet of Tonkatsu by Ma Maison.

If that is not synchronicity, I don’t know what is.

And that is how a couple of weeks after I spotted Tonkatsu at Westgate, I made a date with my sister to try out this new eatery and see if it indeed lives up to its name as a rival of Tonkichi.

My verdict: It’s a pale shadow of the latter. (My verdict is rather charitable compared to some of the choice words my husband used.)

Things got off at a rather bad start when my instructions were misinterpreted. My taste in tonkatsu over the years has evolved. This time, I hardly ever orders katsu-don. Instead, I would get the katsu toji.

Katsu toni is essentially the same as katsu-don, except that the pork cutlet drenched in the titillating concoction of gravy, egg and onion is served separate from the rice.

This is what katsu toji looks like:

Note that the rice is separate from the pork and egg.

Katsu toji is not on the menu of Tonkatsu by Ma Maison. Not a big problem. They have katsu-don, right? If can cook katsu-don, surely can also cook katsu toji. After all, they’re the same thing, just served differently.

I told the waiter I wanted katsu-don but that the pork and egg should be served separately from the rice. He looked bewildered for a second. Then the confusion cleared from his face and he said it would be possible. Good.

However, when it came, it looked like this.

Katsu toji misinterpreted: see how the poor pork cutlet
is sitting all by itself, and the egg mixture is all slumped
all the rice. Cost of this hideous dinner: S$21.80

Yes, they served the egg and what-not on the rice, and the left the poor naked pork cutlet by itself on the platter. My husband definitely did not enjoy his dinner. He complained that the pork was plain and the rice too soggy.

Apart from the freak katsu-don, we also ordered the katsu curry (remember? it was my craving after tasting it in Tonkichi that led us to try out Tonkatsu) and the mackerel and pork loin sets.

Katsu Curry - S$21.80

The curry was not as fragrant and tasty as Tonkichi’s. In fact, it was rather middling.

Mackerel and pork loin set: S$29.80
This comes with a bowl of tartar sauce and a wedge of lemon,
which don't help much in masking the strong fishy taste.

The fishiness of the mackerel was over-powering; perhaps mackerel is not a good choice of fish to be done in the style of katsu due to its strong flavour. I personally found the pork okay. Crispy and tender, fragrant too, although I still prefer Tonkichi’s. But that could be simply because I prefer the katsu toji style which I obviously didn’t get to sample at Tonkatsu.

But my opinion was not shared by the rest of my family who declared the pork tasteless.

And that wrapped up a rather below-average experience at Tonkatsu by Ma Maison. Will we be back again soon? It’s pretty unlikely.

To be fair, my sister pointed out that the original blogger had had his meal at the Mandarin Gallery outlet and we know how sometimes the standard can be inconsistent at different outlets. But at the sort of prices they are charging, I’m not inclined to visit Mandarin Gallery for a test taste to confirm if the problem was indeed a case of inconsistency, an overly positive blogger or simply that standards have fallen since the review was written in 2012.

There was a complimentary appetiser.

Cool radish which also acts as a palate cleanser.
Quite pleasant actually, if you're into raw radish,
which unfortunately I'm not.

Tonjiru soup

There was a complimentary appetiser. All the sets come with a bowl of tonjiru soup, a heap of salad and pickles - the same as Tonkichi, except that Tonkichi serves miso soup; you have to add a charge of I can't remember how much to upgrade the miso soup to tonjiru.

But miso or tonjiru, both Tonkichi soups beat the one at Tonkatsu hands down.

Sorry, I didn't take the shots of the pickles but if you peer carefully at the pictures of the sets, you'll be able to spot said pickles lurking in the background.

The sauces for the salad. They have a sweet version and a spicy version. I'm not too fond of this at Tonkichi but I like the ones at Tonkatsu even less, no thanks to a strange Chinese medicinal taste in both of them.