Tonko Pork Deli

Shuttered for a few months now. No more delicious thick cuts of katsu!
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Very delicious Tonkatsu, big and thick, and no big fatty pieces! Their hours are odd, so best to ge their in the late afternoons, but it’s worth it. Best Tonkatsu in town!

really nice selection!

I recall one of my visits to Tokyo and just arriving late night to the station from Narita. We were starving. We found this small katsu place close by. They had pork and chicken fried cutlet (katsu). I tried the pork fried cutlet (tonkatsu). I can still hear the sound of the crispy tonkatsu being cut by the cook. Then taking a bite with a little sauce, I thought ‘damn this is good’. So tender and juicy, with a crispy outside.
Tonko recalls my visit to tokyo. For a very reasonable $ 6.50 you can get tonkatsu, rice and cabbage. The pork cutlet is a thick piece, hot fried so it is not greasy. The tonkatsu was tender and juicy, with good pork flavor. It is surprisingly light and doesn’t leave that oily taste. If you do a take out order, they separate everything to retain the freshness. The only downside is they don’t make their own katsu sauce. But I’m sure if they did, they’d have to up the price.
If you plan to eat outside some place, be sure to ask them to cut the tonkatsu. They probably don’t usually do this because it would dry out the pork.
I don’t know how long this place will last, but Tonko needs a make-​over to entice people to try their food. Those plastic pigs and hand-​written paper menu signs are well. easy to pass up. In fact the first time I walked by I thought it was a gift shop.

I’ve commented about this place under Marukai Pacific Market but I want to give it its own review. Please note that the phone# is the Marukai store’s main number.
This fast food place is located in the food court section dead next to Beard Papa (For whatever reason, a young punk ass Papa worker kid doesn’t look kindly towards Tonko and customers sometimes but that’s his problem).
The wait time is maybe 5min average, faster than most in this food court.
I’ve had several takeouts and my favorites are:
Fried Tenderloin Pork Medallions:
These are extremely tender with nice fresh flavor (No old tasting meat so far). I think you get plenty of meat for the money. You can order ala carte or with rice.
There are no fatty sections on the meat, none, but they’re heavy for me still (I often leave half for the next day to have with fresh rice and vegetables).
Even straight out of the fridge, they are tender and very good, like a good cold pizza (Night snack fried pork anyone? Wait. don’t go…).
Pork soup (Aka Ton-​Jiru which roughly translates to pork liquid, translation’s going to kill this dish):
The soup has plenty of vegetables, some pork meat and appears to be made of miso based soup. Anyway, it was very decent, a tad salty but felt healthy for eating it (My scale says otherwise but we stopped talking).
As a comparison, the Sawtelle Kitchen’s fried pork (Same Tonkatsu style fried pork) was brassy and I liked it plenty also but Tonko is more like home made simple with consistent quality meat and consistent service. Hasn’t let me down yet. But they are rich like I said… once every 2 weeks is good with me.
They seem to be experimenting with different offerings every few months.
The pork ribs are gone (they were just ok).
Fried pork and tofu meatballs are gone (was ok).
Tenderloin made it to permanent menu item (Excellent).
Ton-​jiru is new.
Regular fried pork is still on the menu (It’s decent).
Oden? (Stewed veggie and fish cakes). Coming soon.
8÷22÷08:
The word Ton in Japanese commonly refers to anything Pork (TonKatsu is fried pork loin for example, TonJiru is Pork broth and TonKotsu is pork bone).
By adding Ko at end to come up with Tonko, this image of innocent female piglet cartoon character comes to mind, whether I like it or not («Ko» is used a lot in Japanese female’s first names e.g. Yoko, Kyoko, Keiko, Chikako, Michiko, etc. etc. you get the idea. No, no parent would name their child Tonko so no such human name if you’re wondering and if there is it’s a cruel joke).
At the place, there are various models of pork on display, to remind me what was cut, sliced and BBQ’d? (So grad I had never owned a piglet for pet…, ducks yes but no piglet…, I’d probably have lost my lunch on the spot if I did. To this day I can’t eat duck meat without being reminded of the pets, a couple at that with ducklings that eventually sprouted).
I didn’t know this place opened recently (A month ago according to a staff). Anyway, I decided to pick up dinner here and ordered a Pork Bowl (Comes with rice and cabbage slices) and Ribs (Ribs appear to be their main thing, sold by½ LB or 1LB).
In short, it was ok, I didn’t eat it all like I was planning, it tasted a bit boring. The meat was tender, no question about it but that great pork meat flavor was lacking. The sauce flavor is nice, mild and quiet however.
The pork, especially the ribs, should have gone great with rice but it was a no go (A better quality, soggy rice would match up great IMHO).
Side note: A young clean looking staff from Beard Papa only a few feet away gave me and the Tonko place a disgusted look (Too much porky smell drifting towards them maybe, or can’t imagine anyone ordering the food? Well tough luck get a mask young dude, and get to work).