My friend P hit me up the other day to say “I found the best tonkatsu I’ve had in LA.” That is pretty tall praise and since this place happened to be close to work, I met up with him yesterday to try it.
Tanuki Curry House is located in a mini mall in central Long Beach, off Willow, east of Cherry. Given the name, their plates are all curry plates. You can get a katsu don but that is lightly sauced and therefore loses some of the crunch. But what they don’t have is a non-curry tonkatsu plate served with shredded cabbage and that dark tonkatsu sauce made with sesame, just so you know what you’re getting.
I will say, I can see why my friend gave it such high praise: the panko crust is what you want: crisp and light. They use a fatty enough loin cut to make sure the meat wasn’t dry. On those levels, it was as good as I’ve had anywhere in L.A.
But…
I thought the tonkatsu was underseasoned and especially as they don’t serve it with that standard tonkatsu sauce, the main thing that adds flavor is the curry. Well, to also quote my friend, “ironically, the curry is very mid” and again, he wasn’t wrong. For a place calling itself a “curry house,” this was some really anemic curry. The whole point of curry is that it’s suppoesd to be this melange of spices, full of character, and this was bland and instantly forgetable.
What you want from a good curry is that it’s so delicious you just start spooning it onto rice and polishing off the entire plate but in this case, after finishing the tonkatsu, I still had most of my rice and curry left and I just decided, “eh, not worth the carbs” because the curry just didn’t add anything.
Tonkatsu: 8/10 (would have been higher if seasoned better)
Curry: 4/10
We also got the curry fries because, why not? These were fine. The fries were nice and crisp, seasoned ok, but as they serve with a side of that aforementioned meh curry, no added bonus there. 7.5/10
We also got a side of cucumber salad which was basic but decent: the sweet acidity helped cut through the heaviness of the rest of the food. 7./10
The tonkatsu plate was $18, the fries were $8, and the cucumber salad was $5.50, all pre-tax/tip
by soulsides