Unique Chazuke (Suzuya - すずや)
Chazuke (or ochazuke) is one of my favorite things to eat. It's just bits of vegetable or fish, some seasoning (usually something like furekake - dried seaweed, sesame seeds, preserved fish...) on top of rice on which green tea is poured. It's a do-it-yourself bowl of porridge.
Yes, tonkatsu please... (photo courtesy of www.toncya-suzuya.co.jp)
But I never in a million years would associate tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlet) as a chazuke topping. But Suzuya manages to pull it off....
...Suzuya is a small chain of tonkatsu restaurants in Japan. Their usual fare is the 3-4 varieties of fried cutlet, ebi-fry (prawn) and mixed flat fish katsu. However, their tonkatsu chazuke is what sets them apart from others.
The dish consists of a reasonable sized tonkatsu and a small pile of coarsley cut cabbage (cabbage is a typical pairing with katsu) sitting on top of a heated iron plate. Rather than a Worcestershire-based sauce (also typical for katsu), a soy based, thin sauce is poured over the food and served sizzling to your table.
From this point, you take as much of the sizzling food and pile it on the semi-giant bowl of rice served with it. Once you've arranged all of this in a pleasant pile, you pour green tea over the whole thing and proceed to dive in.
I think that this dish works well because even though tonkatsu is a typically heavy dish, the sauce is light and tangy (I think the hot iron plate contributes to that), and the cabbage is wilted slightly...the tea marries the flavors together and sinks taste the rice. It ends up being a filling, but not heavy, and very satisfying meal.
There are a few options that you can add to your dish, such as egg or kimchee, but the straight-ahead tonkatsu chazuke is the way to go.
There are Suzuya locations all around Tokyo - see their website above for directions...