umamimart

There’s a little Korea-town in the Akasaka section of Tokyo, just a little side street filled with Korean-owned and operated restaurants. Here, my friend Maho took me to one of her favorite spots, Ton-chan. There are a few Ton-chan’s scattered all around Tokyo- it is bbq, but they specialize in pork (ton, in Japanese means anything pork: TONkatsu, for example).

The place was on the 2nd floor, and was small, but packed. Lots of big groups of vibrant, young women, old businessmen getting drunk, people on dates- the variety was great.

You sit on these trash can like seats- you can open up the lid to drop in your coat. Great idea for those of us who don’t want to end up wreaking of garlic and smoke out in the real world.

Assorted banchan.

Slabs of fatty pork. Look at that! Unreal!!!

The guy came around and cut all the pork up into little pieces. Grilling kimchee was great too. The actual grill is on a peg, so it tilts forward, draining all the fat. Ingenius.

Wrap with unlimited lettuce and spicy slivers of scallions.

They also had a big leaf, kkaenip, which is sort of the Korean shiso, often dubbed “sesame leaf.”

We also ordered the cold buckwheat noodles- a personal favorite.

Tubs of kimchee.

We didn’t get this, but the fried rice the guy across from us was eating looked damn good. They just loaded the grill up with white rice, and it soaked up all the pork fat. YUM!!!

MAHO!

Ton-chan
Fukutomi Bldg., 2nd & 3rd fls.
2-13-14 Akasaka Minato-ku
Tokyo, Japan 107-0052
T: 03-5573-9272