A note on the words: tonkatsu is a breadcrumbed, deep-fried pork cutlet; rosu is the loin and hire the fillet; Minami-no-shima buta is the name of a branded pork from Miyazaki in southern Japan; mugi shochu is a barley spirit, here served long with soda. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Ageduki on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
I want something good to eat today too! This is Hangover Meshi.
I found myself wanting tonkatsu.
I had managed to set out fairly early, so this time it was “Ageduki”, the celebrated tonkatsu shop in Iidabashi!
It looks like a place you can eat at by queuing, without a reservation. They open at 17:30, and surely on a weekday at 17:30 there would not be many people queuing! So off I went.
I arrived about a minute before opening, and there was exactly one person ahead of me.
Once inside, though, customers came in one after another and the room was half full almost at once. Still, on a weekday, right at opening, I think you can usually get in!
Minami-no-shima pork loin katsu — 2,640 yen
Minami-no-shima pork premium loin katsu — 3,540 yen
Minami-no-shima pork fillet katsu — 2,790 yen
Minami-no-shima pork premium fillet katsu — 2,840 yen
Having come all this way, it has to be the southern-island pork!
When the mood is I want tonkatsu!, it is the loin one wants. So: the Minami-no-shima premium loin katsu! Even with a limited number available, being second in the queue means you can be sure of getting it.
And you can order the cutlet on its own, without the set! Excellent.
I want to drink with tonkatsu as my snack!
First, barley shochu with soda!
To keep me company while the tonkatsu fried, I chose the asparagus in sesame dressing.
The asparagus still had a little core to it, but the sesame dressing is rich and pitched slightly salty, which makes it very good with a drink — ideal for picking at slowly.
Oh — that looks good!!!
“Minami-no-shima buta”, from the Nagata breeding farm in Miyazaki prefecture, is said to be an extremely rare pork supplied to only a very small number of places, luxury hotels and the like. The meat is full of savour, fine-grained and juicy, and the fat has a low melting point, so it is clean rather than cloying, with a good fragrance.
It is aged for longer than ordinary pork and served only once properly matured. And the cut used for the premium loin apparently yields only about six pieces from a whole animal — a rare part indeed!
This is fried slowly in low-temperature oil, then briefly in hot oil, and finished with a long rest in which the residual heat continues the cooking — three stages in all. The oil, too, is set out in detail on their notes: a blend of lard, olive oil and canola. They limit how many they fry at once and have calculated even the frying time it takes for the cutlet to reach the table.
The coating is a pale golden colour, with very coarse breadcrumbs clinging tightly to the loin.
Turn a piece over and a lovely cherry-blossom pink runs right through the cut face. A very, very beautiful tonkatsu.
The first mouthful with nothing on it. As the teeth go in, the crunch of the coating arrives first.
The coating is properly crisp and light, with no greasiness at all. Then, a beat later, the meat arrives. That tenderness is exactly what the long, low-temperature frying is for. The more you chew the more the juices run, the savour of the pork comes through clearly, and the sweetness of the fat follows after…
Delicious.
The sweetness of this fat is refined above all, and there is not the slightest heaviness to it.
The fat is astonishingly light. People talk about tonkatsu you can “drink”, and perhaps that is a fair way to put it. The sweetness vanishes so cleanly that I think even someone who dislikes the fat on a loin could manage this — and it is that sweetness which makes the savour of the meat itself stand out.
The second mouthful with Baharat rock salt.
The meat gives its refined, fatty savour and the coating stays airy. The rock salt sharpens and lifts the sweetness of the meat, and this is superb in its own right. The sweetness of the Minami-no-shima pork is strong enough that it is not overwhelmed by the salt, which is impressive.
The third mouthful with the house sauce. At last! Tonkatsu really is about the sauce, isn’t it! The flavour of the sauce tangles with the savour of the pork — wonderful! However often I eat it, the sheer deliciousness holds from the first mouthful to the last. Surely this is perfect with a drink.
Personally, the sauce is still my favourite!
Then back to the salt. Alternating between the two while knocking back the barley soda. A happy moment!
Well — that really was a superb tonkatsu!
The tenderness, yes, but also that sweetness in the fat. The judgement of the frying, pitched exactly right. Every part of it delicious. That you can take the rice set off the order is very good too.
Drink plus tonkatsu — the finest of combinations!
A tonkatsu shop I want to come back to! Strongly recommended!
If you go, I think 17:30 is the moment to aim for!
Ageduki (tonkatsu / Iidabashi Station, Ushigome-Kagurazaka Station, Kagurazaka Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★★☆ 4.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
