Chicken Katsu-Don @ Fuji Sushi

Today I went to a place called Fuji Sushi which is in the International District near my workplace. It is located down the street from Ft. St. George (the place I wrote about last week) on Main Street between 5th and 6th Ave. Fuji Sushi is my favorite Japanese place in Seattle and I highly recommend it. They have a traditional room with tatami mats for parties of four or more (with a minimum price spent per person) that is definitely worth if if you are so inclined. I met the owner while working at a restaurant supply store a few years ago when I had just gotten back from Japan. I gave his place a try because he was such a nice guy, and I have been going back as much as I can ever since.

Although it is called Fuji Sushi, they serve home-style (read: cooked) Japanese food as well. Today I ordered chicken katsudon. It is a dish of chicken katsu, onions, and eggs served over a bowl of rice with ginger for cleansing the palate. Chicken katsu is breaded chicken Japanese style. Traditionally katsu is pork, not chicken, and is referred to as tonkatsu. In general tonkatsu has more flavor but is fattier. I try to minimize how much pork I eat so tend to favor chicken katsu, although I noticed in Japan it can be kind of difficult to find katsu made of chicken, it is almost always pork -- at least on the island of Kyushu.

Typically tonkatsu is served with miso soup, rice, and pickled items called tsukemono on the side, rather than over rice in a single bowl, and then covered with a sauce known simply as "tonkatsu sauce." I sometimes refer to tonkatsu sauce as 'Japanese barbecue sauce' to those that do not know Japanese food, although I would have to say that is stretching it quite a bit. It is very sweet and is mostly made of apples, giving it a very unique flavor. According to Wikipedia, the precursor to tonkatsu was actually introduced to Japan by the Portugese, which I had not known before but is very interesting to me. When I lived in Nagasaki I noticed many foods that had obvious European or Chinese influence, but typically the European-influenced dishes were spelled in Katakana, which is a phonetic 'alphabet', distinct from Hiragana and Kanji, that is typically only used to spell foreign words. Tonkatsu is spelled with Kanji, making me think that it is one of the few dishes with foreign origins that Japanese people love so much that they have fully adopted it as part of their culture and made it their own. Whatever the reasoning, I do know that it is delicious!