Mr. Tonkatsu: Pork cutlets in Surrey

Mr. Tonkatsu is a new pork cutlet restaurant originating from Toronto. They opened their first BC location last year! You can now find them in Surrey, right by Surry Guildford Mall. This review is based on their Surrey location.

Interior

The interior of Mr. Tonkatsu is cute and clean. If you know what I am talking about, it looks like it is run by Korean people. They just have a certain type of aesthetic.

We drop by on a Tuesday night at around 8:30 pm and it is quite empty. We think it might be because they close in 1 hour.

There is a cute little sign teaching us how to enjoy eating tonkatsu.

Food

Their menu consists of tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlet) served in different ways.

Pork tenderloin katsu with soba ($17)

My boyfriend chooses to order the classic tonkatsu set, which is a piece of pork cutlet, a bowl of rice, cabbage and a bowl of miso soup. Just like Saku, the cabbage and miso soup are refillable.

The soba arrives first in a little bowl. It is served hot/warm, which we find slightly strange because we always eat our soba cold.

The sauce that comes with the tonkatsu set is different from the sauce sitting at our table. It’s sweeter and we actually prefer this one over the other sauce.

The tonkatsu is fried heavenly. I argue that in terms of frying technique, they are on par with Saku. Biting into it, the cut of meat is what it is (and I mean average), but the texture of the tonkatsu stood out to me. It does not taste oily and has a very dry crunchy and light taste. The batter sticks to the meat and is not separated or falling off.

Pork loin katsu curry ($16)

I order the katsu curry and holy it is a giant plate of food! Like the set, the pork cutlet is fried to the same standard as the set and is placed on top of a bed of rice so that it doesn’t get soggy from the curry sauce.

The curry sauce is your standard Japanese curry taste – sweet and not spicy at all. There are no vegetables in this curry so it’s just the base sauce.

The amount of food on this plate is too much for me and I cannot finish all the rice, let alone have anymore cabbage or miso soup (darn you tonkatsu places!).

Final thoughts

I really like Mr. Tonkatsu’s pork cutlets. I find that it tastes very similar to Saku except it’s not all the way downtown and you do not have to wait 2 hours outside to get a seat. In this way, I think I have found a local little gem.

I think their frying technique extends to a lot of their other menu items. Therefore, I assume anything else that is deep fried on their menu will have a similar standard. You really can’t go wrong with ordering any of their pork cutlet variations.

Sincerely, Loewe