Location: 487 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://browndonkatsu.ca/
Brown Donkatsu serves the Korean version of tonkatsu, which is quite similar, but with a sweeter sauce.
Before checking this place out, I had read a few references to how big the portions are, so I was expecting a hefty meal. I was unprepared.
Wow, it’s a lot of food. I got the combo katsu, which comes with half brown katsu sauce, and half cream sauce. You can choose from chicken or pork; I went with pork.
Every order comes with two fried cutlets, and I’m not sure if you can get a sense of the scale from the photo, but they’re surprisingly massive. One of these would be enough for any reasonable person. Two is… a lot.
I think the reasonable thing to do is to eat one and take the other to go. The problem here is that they’re very, very good. So once I started eating, I couldn’t stop. The crispy exterior is substantial enough to give you a very hearty crunch, but light enough that it doesn’t overwhelm the pork. And the pork is nice and tender. It’s seriously tasty.
I finished it, but I didn’t feel good about it, that’s for sure. It’s the type of meal where you feel like you have to go lie down to recover.
I will say that I’ll probably just stick with the brown sauce if I ever find myself back here. It complements the meaty pork quite well, with a nice sweetness that helps round things out (it’s also quite different from the curry or tonkatsu sauce that you might expect). The ultra-rich cream sauce, on the other hand, is a bit one-note heavy. I certainly didn’t dislike eating it, but a little of it goes a long way. I would have liked about 90% brown sauce, and 10% cream sauce for a little bit of extra richness.
As for the other stuff on the plate, the sweet, creamy dressing on the cabbage is nice, and the corn and rice are corn and rice.
Michael Eats 