The original East 47th Street location of Katsuhama occupied the smallest of spaces: a narrow corridor and tiny dining room concealed behind a carry-out sushi bar. A waiter would challenge you at the door with a question that ran something like this: "Do you know what is served here?" Then, pretending not to hear your answer, he'd practically shout, "No sushi! No sashimi!"
Apparently, customers wandered in all the time demanding sushi. Instead, the house specialty was tonkatsu, a perfect pork cutlet breaded and deep-fried by experts. As is the convention at this type of restaurant, known as a tonkatsu-ya in Japan, the cutlet came sided with a haystack of shredded white cabbage, a dab of mouth-puckering mustard, and a mortar and pestle in which you'd be invited to concoct your own condiment out of roasted sesame seeds, a spice powder called shichimi, and a thick, sweet brown fluid of a proprietary composition unique to each tonkatsu-ya.
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