Katsuhon – Melbourne – eye-catching tonkatsu, nabe and shogayaki

Katsuhon has taken over a Korean restaurant at the corner of Little Bourke Street and Queen Street in Melbourne’s CBD. It’s located close to Hardware Lane with its many well-known restaurants with outdoor seating and servers that try to entice you into their establishment. Katsuhon has an interesting set-up with a small izakaya-like den with several dining cubicle areas positioned outside the main restaurant like private dining suites.

I was seated in the izakaya-den at one of the many counters for single visitors. At the table, I was provided a glass of water and directed to order my meal via the QR code and then to pay at the counter (if I wanted to pay cash for the 5% discount).

Although the venue is known for its tonkotsu, I opted instead for their Spicy Ginger Pork or Shogayaki dish for $28 (or ~$26 with cash). I wasn’t feeling up for a heavy meal on the day and needed to be attentive in my afternoon meetings. The restaurant had other guests that ordered the meal sets with udon or rice. The other meals, while very tempting and eye-catching, didn’t convince me on the day to switch over to a noodle soup bowl nor tonkotsu meal set.

When my dish of Spicy Ginger Pork arrived, it was a beautifully presented meal set. There was a clay pot or nabe over a small candle flame with the pot being packed with delicious pork belly, enoki and tofu, and the spicy sauce. (I highly recommend mixing the dish to ensure the tofu and enoki get soaked in the sauce.) Plus a small bowl of rice, yuzu cabbage salad. miso soup and a chicken wing.

The smell of the dish was pleasant, leaving me salivating to dig in.

The meal was unexpectedly delicious, because I simply wasn’t prepared how good everything was in the pot. I really loved the spicy pork belly because the meat was so tender and thick, and very generous in its serving. I was particularly impressed with how bite sized they made the pork and just how delicious the seasoning was for the whole dish.

Although the bowl of rice was small, I was able to get a free refill when I needed it because I was generously spooning the sauce from the clay pot over the rice. The sauce was such a wonderful mix of flavours of meat and chili that the Japanese rice soaked it all in.

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