Kinmata Tonkatsu    近又吉列黑豚專賣店  

With a group purchase coupon I visited this Japanese restaurant yesterday. They are famous for the black pork from Japan.The meal set consists of a soft drink, salad, soup, rice, and a big plate with shredded veggies and pieces of deep fried breaded sweet potatoes, fish fillet, stuffed mushroom, shrimp, and of course the black pork on it. I hate soft drink and I actually ordered a cup of water instead. The salad was the smallest one could imagine but tasted quite OK and was fresh enough, there were tiny pieces of raw salmon and octopus in it. The soup was salty and looked quite horrendous as there were pieces of fatty animal skin and tissues floating on it. The bowl of rice is claimed to come from Japan alas I could find nothing special about it, quite chewy in texture but no rice fragrant at all. The deep fried items were all unimpressive, the famous black pork really tasted not bad but definitely will not be any better than those coming fresh from any ordinary wet market or supermarket in town. The breadcrumbs on top the deep fried items were very crunchy and crumby, dissolved in mouth at once, again claims to be coming from Japan. Remember don't dip the black pork into the paste specially prepared for it, except you want to drown out the taste of the black pork totally.

My first thought when I sat down and saw the menu..."WOW this is pricey, it better be good" I just kept telling myself it is because they use good pork. Seriously, I can eat this meal in LA for $8US. So I ordered the pork hamburg since I love beef hamburg, so I was interested to try the pork version. I also ordered the pork stew. Both were really good. Although they were fried it was not oily. I like the 2 choices of salad dressing for the cabbage which is refillable. The dipping sauce with self grind sesame was fragrant as well.

I ordered sashimi , fried oyster, fried scallop and mixed rice combo. This made a nice combination cos I did not want to eat much fried food. Sashimi is nice considering that sashimi is not the key dish of the restaurant. The fried oyster n scallop is fresh, not greasy at all, and crispy. The miso soup is surprisingly better than others cos there is tofu, carrot n meat. The only complaint is : the rice was brought to me first, 5 min before the other dishes were served. By the time the dishes arrived, the rice was no longer hot (I thought it was not very hot already at first)Service is nice.

Came here just to try their fried snacks, ordered the curry burato, fried curry rice ball, which is similar to the italian version, except the italian version is not that crunchy on the outside.

Surprisingly the curry rice ball was quite nice, and the cheese in the centre went well with the curry rice.

The next snack was fried edame beans and potato croquette, it tasted rather plain and boring and need sauces to spice it up.

Came here on a weekend lunch all by myself, as it seems everyone else is either sick or doesn't wanna come out after Easter holiday. Ordered:
えびフライ＆広島カキフライ　Prawn and Oyster Fry -
Prawn was good, but too oily.
Oyster had a funny smell, also the batter was way too thick and oyster wasn't juicy.
Came with a Jap style Tartare sauce, which was eggy but not much p'ickles' taste - I guess I like this style of Tartare sauce as well as the original ones.
Batter really oily.

黒豚かつ　Kurobuta Pork Loin (Katsu) Set Lunch -
The batter on the 'pork cutlet' was ultra oily, more than the seafood ones. Not only that, but the oil was 益益地 plus had overcooked pork lard taste, BOTH TOGETHER. Obviously, the Pork and the Seafood were cooked in different batches of oil, where one was used to cook pork only.
The Kurobuta pork meat was ultra tough, had none of the distinct Japanese Kurobuta only 甘味 sweet oil taste nor meat taste. I can't believe this would be Kurobuta.
The Katsu sauce was slightly too acidic, instead of being fruity and dense. Didn't go with the pork well, so hardly used it.
The batter looked good but if you look closer on the photo, oil is leaking out. Overall, the experience was quite bad. The cabbage with the 2 sauces was good, the rice was actually very good (had refills).
Its not as good as Tonkichi 丼吉 and Ootoya 大戸屋, but honestly, I have not had the pleasure to devour great Pork Tonkatsu in Hong Kong yet, compared to Japan or even in Australia. So far, 大戸屋 came closest, but that's still not great.
Having said that, the service in Kinmata here was really great - they even listened to my complaint of the Tonkatsu's oil having already been long overdue.

A Low '3' due to oil and oyster issue, but not as bad as '2'.

had dinner with two friends here tonite.

my friend called but they said no telephone booking accepted. so we went to the restaurant by ~7.00pm, well, no one queued up and quite a few available tables inside so we got our seats at once.

we ordered 3 sets:

pork fillet + oyster

pork loin + oyster

pork loin

if you tried the popular one at tst/cwb before, here the settings are similar. two salad dressings, one pork sauce, a bowl of sesame seeds, unlimited supply of veggie salad, a bowl of rice. what's more, you also got a bowl of miso soup.

talking about taste and texture,

- veggie salad: i didn't like the two dressings. tst/cwb's much better.

- sesame seeds: already grounded, don't expect to get the same "fun" here.

- rice & miso soup: okay.

- pork / oyster / etc all fried stuff: VERY oily, a quality that i can't accept with a restaurant who claims itself an EXPERT of japanese style fried food. very very very oily and poorly fried, let alone the taste. i love eating fried food very much and i like those crispy unhealthy batter, but this one, tonite i had to remove as much as i could from the pork / oyster - just too oily and looked so bad!!!

i know this is cheaper than the tst/cwb one, but, well, i prefer to pay 200 bucks more to enjoy my dinner!!!

i have had katsu at several different places in HK and this is the only place that got me wanting to puke afterward.

The place was lovely and it looked really authentic so i decided to go and try it out. But then i was extremely disappointed. i personally believe the sauce should make the whole deal less rich but this sauce was not able to do it's job and was way too sweet.
there was also not enough shredded cabbage for me personally. the only good thing with this whole course is the rice and the soup.

I personally wouldn't go again, the katsu place in world trade or canto road are both better than this! and since the price is similar i don't think there is a need to come here again. sigh....