Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

The most popular Tonkatsu restaurant in Osaka, from what I read probably one of the top in Japan. With a Tabelog score of 4.19 from 1186 comments (as of Dec 2022), Tabelog Silver Award for 3 consecutive years (2020-2022), and Tabelog Bronze Award for 2017-2019, that has to mean something.

Disclaimer: I do know Tokyo has quite a number of highly rated Tonkatsu restaurant, the legendary Narikura (new store with the original chef Seizo Mitani) comes to mind, which we are really interested to try. But so far we have not yet been to Tokyo yet (gasp!), so we can only comment and compare when we do, hopefully in the near future!

April 2023 Update: We also re-visited Manger in April 2023, 3 other pork breeds! Do scroll down for the update!

**Crisp thin batter**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

**Pickled Vegetables**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

Kagoshima Kuro-buta 160g + Set Meal (¥2790 + ¥570)

From what we Google translated, it is a pure breed Berkshire grown at Kagoshima, has a slow growth thus need 2 more months compared to normal pigs. It also has a distinct taste profile, rich and sweet potato flavour.

Before I start the review, our first 2 choices of we wanted are not available by our timeslot at 12.30pm, for reference their first timeslot is 11am, roughly 45 minutes per timeslot, so ours are only the 3rd timeslot and it’s gone.

Our first 2 choices that I really wanted to try are:

Tokyo X
Golden Boar

Alas, have to anticipate for it on our next trip there.

But I digress, now to the actual review.

I mean, everyone knows the brand of Kagoshima Black Pork, it is that famous. The pigs’ diet even include of sweet potatoes, probably that’s why the meat is richer and sweeter.

Visually the tonkatsu is beautiful fried to a golden brown and crispy, it’s like one look you know/assume it is crispy.

Onto the texture, when you bite into the meat, the satisfaction of biting through the thin golden crisp batter, and then the fatty marbled meat (higher fatty meat to lean meat ratio); which is firm yet tender, you can feel the bite of the meat yet it is soft.

For the taste, in my opinion this is where it shines. It is rich, juicy, and very flavourful. Just feel it has a huge depth of flavours. Maybe the inclusion of sweet potatoes in their diet help in the flavour and sweetness, and healthier meat too. In short, it is just a rich aroma flavour bomb in your mouth. This, you have to really try it to understand it.

Of course, with such high quality meat, zero hint of the bad porky smell/taste.

I will say this choice of pork is for people who likes stronger and/or richer taste, the aroma is just right in your face. (Definitely, my style!)

For the writeup of the accompanied choices of 2 kinds of salt and sauces, will be in a separate portion below.

The Set Meal inclusive of rice (refill up to 3 times), salad, pickled vegetables, and miso soup.

Rating: 4.25/5

**Gunma Himuro-buta**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

Gunma Himuro-buta 160g + Set Meal (¥3660 + ¥570)

From what we Google translated, it is a 14 days aged pork in freezing temperature, thus the nickname “Iced Room Pork”. This technique is born from 25 years of research, providing 25% more amino acids and 15% richness in flavour to the meat! Guess somehow locking in all the good stuff using science? (For those who can read Japanese, you can refer to the menu below for the description.)

Poka chose this meat, so this review is from her perspective, although I did took one piece of it.

Visually the tonkatsu is beautiful fried to a golden brown and crispy, it’s like one look you know/assume it is crispy. (Copy and paste from the Kagoshima Black Pork for the visual part, cause it is of the same standard.)

Onto the texture, when you bite into the meat, the satisfaction of biting through the thin golden crispy batter, and then the meat (both fatty and lean portion); it’s like after a crunch and immediately you will feel the meat melt in your mouth (to be exact on your tongue). It is really an experience that is hard to pen down, you just got to try it.

For the taste, it is very light, juicy, and natural sweetness, no hint of any pork taste or smell. Most interesting is, the meat ratio is of higher lean meat than to fatty meat, and yet it can be so tender and melt in your mouth (much more compared to the Kagoshima Kuro-buta which has more fatty meat ratio).

To her, the melt in the mouth experience is akin to eating an A5 wagyu beef, but this is tonkatsu! We can only say the science to this technique is just wow.

I will say this will be a lady choice of pork, or people that prefers a lighter taste/scent and very tender meat. Poka highly prefers this pork over mine (Kagoshima Kuro-buta).

Rating: 4.25/5

**Foie Gras Tonkatsu**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

Foie Gras Tonkatsu (¥2480)

We just have to try an unique dish, so the Foie Gras Tonkatsu it is.

It’s concept reminds me of Taiwan street food, meat inside a meat; those who are familiar with Taiwanese street food will know. The Foie Gras Tonkatsu dish is similar, for the ratio it is 40:60 of foie gras to pork meat.

The review of this dish will be a bit biased (against their own dishes), but the score will be objective.

Overall it is acceptable, but wait, don’t just scroll away. You must understand in this context we are already spoiled by the awesome boutique pork that both scored a 4.25/5 from us, which is the highest score we have given since we started this blog (as of now Dec 2022), and only a couple other restaurants we gave a score 4.25/5. It’s no fight at all, this meat and foie gras just pale in comparison to it. But, if we grade this as a standalone, this is still a great dish.

The pork they used are probably the regular non-boutique pork as it definitely is a bit tougher and not as flavourful in comparison, foie gras wise seems to be the more budget option as it is not very creamy and still have a bit of liver taste. Batter wise still same standard, beautifully fried to a golden brown crisp.

We can totally understand why this couldn’t be better than their boutique pork obvious reasons. Mainly the price point, this dish costs ¥2480, almost all the boutique pork by itself costs more than this dish already, and some by a good margin.

Secondly, maybe they just wanted to have a fun dish and not go all out that diners wouldn’t want to try/spend on it.

What we think can be improved on this, if they come up with a deluxe version of this dish at a pricepoint of say ¥4000-¥5000, same amount of meat, but improve the quality of the meat components. Meaning using:

Boutique pork meat
Higher grade foie gras

Just let this thought sink in, imagine the 2 different types of boutique pork already got a score of 4.25/5 from us, and now with an addition of high grade foie gras. I mean we can’t assume just using expensive/high quality ingredients = good food, but the variables here are more controlled (same restaurant, same cooking style, same everything, just higher quality meat).

I mean we can only think of the potential…

Rating: 3.5/5

Just to emphasis, a 3.5/5 score from us is a great score already. You guys can always check our Food Rating Guide on our scoring.

**Hyogo Awaji Golden Boar**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

April 2023 Update

Hyogo Awaji Golden Boar 270g + Set Meal (¥3950 + ¥570)

Our long awaited re-visit to Manger!

Quite lucky today the 3 pork breeds they have are all 3 we have not tried, 2 of them are those we really wanted to try! Tokyo X and Golden Boar!

Now onto the review; from what I can google translate of the description of this pork breed; it is a cross breed between 3 types of wild boars which creates very distinctive characteristics. Even though it’s fatty meat but the taste is not heavy and have a light aftertaste.

Taste: Very juicy and tender with all the natural fat/oils in the meat. Zero porky taste at all, really like the description for this pork breed has mentioned light aftertaste. Really have the strong aroma/fragrant when eating, but zero hint or the bad porky smell at all.

Texture: When biting in one can feel all the juice/oil bursting out, also feel a tinge of acidity also. Not sure how to explain the acidity part.

Overall: When eat with my favourite white truffle salt, totally elevates the flavour even more; you can feel the umami, meaty and sweetness taste.

Probably one of my top 3 pork breeds, the other 2 will be Tokyo X and Kagoshima Kurobuta.

Rating: 4.25/5

Tokyo X 270g + Set Meal (¥5430 + ¥570)

Tokyo X; the pork breed both of us wanted to try the most!

One of the top pork breed in boutique pork scene for it’s high quality meat, how this came about; it was triple cross breed between the Duroc (USA), Berkshire (UK), and Beijing Black (China) pigs.

Taste: Clean, juicy and tender, can also feel subtle sweetness from it. Zero bad porky smell also. Overall very balanced taste and ratio of meat, fat, and taste.

If you guys played RPG games, Tokyo X will be having all round stats of like 8 or 9 out of 10, I mean none of the stats reach a perfect 10, but a super all rounder.

Texture: Need a slight bite to bite into. When biting in one can feel the juice/oil coming out, but not as much as the Golden Boar.

Overall: I can see why so many people like and want to try Tokyo X, in short; if you see this on the menu for that day, just order it. It is an all rounder that will suit most people palate.

Rating: 4.25/5

**Miyazaki Aji Buta**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

Miyazaki Aji Buta 160g (¥2230)

The 3rd pork breed we tried that day, this is just for sharing so no set ordered.

Taste: Some meaty juicy taste, but can’t really taste any other unique characteristics. We find it pretty standard with no highlight of this pork breed and the only pro is no bad porky taste.

Texture: Definitely the most firm bite we needed to bite into, from out of the 5 pork breeds we tried here in Manger.

Overall: After setting such a high bar from Golden Boar and Tokyo X for our April 2023 visit, this definitely pales in comparison. As like the Foie Gras Tonkatsu, it is good, but not worth your time and effort to come to Manger to order this. You probably can go to many other good Tonkatsu restaurants and can get this quality.

Rating: 3.5/5

**Black charcoal salt**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

**White truffle salt**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

Condiments

They have accompanied condiments of 1 selection of salt and tonkatsu sauce for each tonkatsu, the options are:

Salt

White truffle salt
Black charcoal salt

Sauce

Tonkatsu sauce
Original sauce

To be very honest, I can’t recall the sauces taste, plus we don’t even have chance to try a second round for all the condiments since there are only 6-7 slices of tonkatsu.

But for our preference (coincidentally), we both like the black charcoal salt. As we feel with such high quality pork, we just need a good salt to go with it to sort of enhance it only.

Menu 1/6

Menu 2/6

Menu 3/6

Menu 4/6

Menu 5/6

Menu 6/6

Do click on the arrows to navigate the full menu

**Opening Hours**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

**Entrance carpet with their name and logo!**
Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ

Overall

Our first foray into boutique pork tonkatsu, it is really really memorable and darn good to say the least. Only can hope the next visit to Manger we can really try the other boutique pork, especially Tokyo X and Golden Boar.

Is it worth the queueing system of coming at 8.30am (or earlier) to queue and write down your name to get your timeslot, and come back later from 11am onwards (depending on your timeslot)?

Is it worth to travel to Yao by train, which is approximately 35 minutes from Umeda station and 25 minutes from Namba station?

Is it worth to spend this amount of time and effort for a foodie trip?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Some side story for your entertainment, I even wanted to postpone our shinkansen ride to Nagoya on the next day to a later timing, just to have another go at Tonkatsu Manger before we leave Osaka. Wife is ok with that on the condition that no extra fees due to the changes, but sadly there will be. Cause I bought the early bird tickets, and if I change a day prior that will be counted as regular ticket price (difference is rather significant, since the discount is 25-30% thereabouts if I remember correctly).

Fated to come back on another trip, rather than the next day. :(

Side story 2, I think both of us just got awe inspired and got brain mush, we should have actually do a 2nd order of the boutique pork tonkatsu when we are still at the restaurant, so we can at least try more varieties and well…eat more of the yummy pork!

Count on us to be back to Manger when we are in Osaka, and of course I would love to try all the highly rated tonkatsu restaurant in Tokyo too if we go there, especially the legendary Narikura!

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Address: 大阪府八尾市陽光園 2-3-22

Opening Hours: 11am-2pm, 5pm-8pm Wed-Sun.

Payment Method: Cash and Cards

Website: https://tonkatsumanger.com/

Tabelog: https://tabelog.com/en/osaka/A2707/A270705/27013624/

(Last visited: April 2023)

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Tonkatsu Manger - Best tonkatsu we ever eaten!

Tonkatsu Manger とんかつ マンジェ

Kagoshima Kuro-buta 160g + Set Meal (¥2790 + ¥570)

Gunma Himuro-buta 160g + Set Meal (¥3660 + ¥570)

Foie Gras Tonkatsu (¥2480)

April 2023 Update

Hyogo Awaji Golden Boar 270g + Set Meal (¥3950 + ¥570)

Tokyo X 270g + Set Meal (¥5430 + ¥570)

Miyazaki Aji Buta 160g (¥2230)

Condiments

Overall

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Tonkatsu Manger とんかつマンジェ