Nestled into a little corner of Vegas Chinatown, just across a tiny street off Spring Mountain from the Paifang Arch that marks the entrance to Chinatown plaza, is a little nook called Ton Shou Katsu & Izakaya that opened my eyes to what Japanese katsu could be. At other places in the US, it’s some lazy side dish you get when you want something crunchy to go with your noodles or sushi. Here, it’s the star.
The first time I suggested we try this place, I was skeptical. Ton Shou is an izakaya, a Japanese-style bar for drinking and snacking. And it was like, noon on a Saturday or something. We wanted noms right then, not at 6 pm that night when the bar food was available and we already had dinner plans. Add to that, the website had nothing. No info. It still doesn’t. Go take a look. Just in case they’ve decided to update it, I’ll preserve the austerity below so people won’t be like “what are you on about dude, their website’s great.”
It’s a single page. There isn’t even a link to their menu. And this is exactly what it looked like when I first went. They haven’t updated it in over a year.
So you can tell I was probably a bit cautious the first time, but they had a 4.6 or 4.7 or something on Yelp, so I figured, “what the hell? let’s try it. I want katsu.”
Buddy, let me tell you. This place has some god damn katsu. I’m just gonna spoil everything right up front and tell you it’s the best katsu I’ve ever had. It’s the best katsu my friends who’ve been to Japan have ever had. It’s the best katsu a lot of people have ever had, and the other reviews speak to that.
But you’re not here for other reviews. You’re here for mine. So let’s get some noms at Ton Shou and explore what great katsu means, shall we?
The Menu
It’s now late November 2025 as I write this, and it’s my second time at Ton Shou. The first time last year was so remarkable, so formulative, so astoundingly holy-crappingly memorable that I knew I’d be back the very next time I went to Vegas. Well, go figure, I haven’t been to Vegas in a year. But I have an anime con to attend this time around, so here we are.
The menu isn’t enormous, but it hits all the important parts. Plenty of starters, a full selection of carpaccio and tataki, noodles, donburi, and of course, an extensive sushi menu. There’s an option for a steak or a burger if you’re one of those, and the skewer selection will make literally anyone who eats food happy. Unless you don’t eat meat, vegetables, or mushrooms. Then I don’t know what to tell you. You shouldn’t be here. Go consume your daily nutritional paste.
It’s all prepared fresh by the chefs in the open kitchen. There’s a ten seat bar you can sit at with a close-up view of the show as your stuff’s cooked and prepped right in front of you. All in all though, it’s not a huge space. There’s room for about 60 people, and it’s not uncommon to see lines. They’re awesome about reservations though, and we didn’t have to wait more than five minutes once we arrived for a table of nine.
Some disclaimers before we get started on the food here — I’m gonna be using a lot of Japanese terms that I may not fully understand. If anything is mislabeled, I apologize in advance. Also, the lighting in this place is truly bad for filming, but I did my best to find clear shots among the garbage. Roast me in the comments.
The Katsu
There’s a word in Japanese: sakutto. It comes from sakusaku, an onomatopoeia that describes a crunching sound. While sakusaku is used to describe rich deep fried foods like tempura and fries, you wouldn’t ideally use it to describe katsu. If you did, it would mean the katsu is oily and too heavy.
Instead, you’d want to describe katsu as sakutto, which also means crispy. But in this case, it’s a delicate, light crisp. This is the crispy you want your katsu to be. You want it to be sakutto, not sakusaku.
AND BUDDY, LET ME TELL YOU. The katsu at Ton Shou is sakutto af. No oiliness. No feeling like you just ate a soaked rag. Not heavy at all, with one exception we’ll cover later.
I tried two types of cutlet while I was there this time around. Actually three, but I didn’t get any footage of the third. It happens. I’m new at this. Suffice it to say, the sakekatsu (salmon cutlet) is astoundingly perfect. The salmon is so, so, so buttery. It was eaten up instantly and insatiably by our group. I’ll be sure to get one just for me next time.
Let’s hit it.
Rosu Katsu
Let’s call this the most common type of katsu in Japan, tonkatsu. Rosu katsu is a cut of ton (pork) that uses the loin. It’s tenderized with a jacquard and marinated so that the meat is filled with juice throughout like a good steak. There’s also hire katsu that makes use of pork tenderloin medallions. I’ve had it before, and it’s very good. Gonna be honest here though, the rosu katsu is more tender if you’re into that sort of thing. You know, the whole chewing your food thing.
Okay, sure, I sound old. But do you ask for the toughest cut of meat possible when you order a steak? … You do? Stop it. Stop it right now.
This food is absolutely freaking divine. Every bite is a mélange of crunchy, supple, salty, juicy, porky goodness. The kind of flavor that turns your knees to Jello and makes you gyrate like Elvis. This is quintessential youshoku — western food that’s been perfected by Japan. If you’re not exposed to the way the Japanese language mangles foreign words, katsu is short for katsuretsu, the Japanese pronunciation of cutlet. It’s not much of a stretch when you learn that the Japanese pronunciation of coffee jelly is kouhii zerii. Thanks for teaching me that, Saiki.
Every nom of tender loin (as opposed to tenderloin) evaporates in your mouth. It puts up less of a fight than a level 1 goblin. The satisfying way that the meat collapses between your teeth is every carnivore’s dream, having been meticulously trimmed of all potential impediments that might ruin the experience. Each piece is perfect. Every bite, perfect. Ken Watanabe, the Last Samurai himself? He was actually talking about the katsu at Ton Shou.
There isn’t anything else that can be said about this meal. I was at a table with several people who’ve been to Japan in the past year. They agree. This place is legit. No contest, it’s the best katsu I’ve ever eaten.
Katsu Sauce
This one’s fun. If you order katsu, they bring by a little ceramic bowl called a suribachi that has ridges all along the inside. It’s got a bunch of toasted sesame seeds in it, and they hand you wooden pestle called a surikogi to pound and scrape the sesame seeds into submission. After grinding for just a minute or so, you get an intense smell of toasted sesame that hits everyone at your table. It’s glorious.
Right before your food comes out, your server swings by with a warm kettle full of tonkatsu sauce that gets added to your ground sesame rubble. They’re generous with it, filling the bowl nearly to the brim and allowing you to mix the concoction together on your own.
It’s a delectable sauce, with some sweet notes of various fruits and veggies cooked down. I found it mixing well with just about everything on my plate, especially as a topping for the rice of all things. You can see it above covering my rosu katsu like a blanket of warm love.
Loved every dab of it.
Miso Soup
Let’s talk about a few of the items that come with your adorable little katsu spread when you order one, starting with soop.
This is some interesting miso soup! Trust me, the ! is warranted. Usually when you get omisoshiru from a Japanese restaurant, you get dashi broth with miso paste melted in, some tofu, and a little wakame seaweed. This has almost none of that.
The dashi is there, but it feels like the broth is chicken based as much as seaweed, bonito, and white miso. This leads to a huge depth of flavor and mixture of western and eastern flavors that made me very happy. Add to that small chunks of chicken imparting their flavor, and it culminated in a wonderful experience unlike other miso soups I’m used to. Like any other chicken soup, you’ll get carrots and onions. The celery, if it was present, had disintegrated by the time it got to me.
Overall, a very solid and unique take on miso soup. The tofu and seaweed weren’t present, and since this is a very different style of miso, I’d say they weren’t missed either.
Cabbage
This is normally a forgettable side. Not so at Ton Shou. Hey, that rhymes.
Look, the cabbage is fine. It’s white and red and thinly sliced with a little julienned carrot in there. Nothing you can’t pick up at a grocery store for a couple bucks in a bag. The true star here is the sauce.
That damned sauce.
Oh man, I don’t really have words. It’s almost a ketchup mayo mix, but it feels like they thin it out with some rice vinegar that adds a tart sweetness. They throw in a smoky spice that makes it unique among everything else. I have no idea what’s in it, to be honest. And I have no idea how to explain it. It’s incredible, and not just on the cabbage. I dipped my katsu in it and it was perfect. My biggest mistake was not asking for three more little tins of it.
Put that sauce on everything. You will not regret it.
Assorted Pickles
Every katsu plate comes with a little 3×1 platelet of tsukemono, Japanese pickles. I checked with our server, and she verified that the first one is pickled cucumber and the second two are both pickled daikon. I took it upon myself to Google a bunch of info on them that I’m still a bit sus about, but I did my best, so geronimo.
The cucumber pickles are called kyurizuke and seem to be pickled in rice vinegar, some sugar, and soy sauce with possibly a bit of mirin. They’re very good and offer an amazing palate cleanser between bites of katsu.
Our second offering is the pink, diced daikon in the middle. The closest thing I can associate this with is sakurazuke, pickled with sugar, vinegar, and red shiso leaf for color. These tend to use a higher amount of sugar, and yeah, they’re like candy when you eat them.
Finally, we have what I’m pretty sure is fukujinzuke, a dark red offering that’s pickled in mirin, sugar, and soy sauce, lending a super dark color. They’re pretty tangy and a feel more like pickles than the last one. Loved them.
In fact, all of them were good. Have I mentioned I love this restaurant?
Cheese Katsu
Moving on, I tried a massive piece of chizutonkatsu as well. I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Cheese is what dreams are made of, and look at all that goddamn cheese.
It’s mozzarella, pure and simple. But this is no mere cheese stick, trust you me. Buried in there is a thin layer of pork that adds some structure to what would otherwise be an ooey gooey mess. Or at least that’s the intention. The gooeyness will not be contained, and you are in for an EPIC cheese pull.
The coating on the cheese katsu REALLY shines here. With the rosu katsu, it absorbs a bit of the juice from the meat — unavoidable since everything is so juicy, so the bottom of the tonkatsu can get a little soaked over time while the top stays nice and crispy. It’s actually a fascinating bit of physics that adds to the overall perfection. Here though, the cheese keeps the coating well insulated from any of that. Every single bite is maximum crunch mixed with soft cheese.
The only problem here might be a bit of a stretch (hah), but it comes across as a burden of affluence. There’s so much cheese. Like, it’s hard for a normal person to eat more than a couple of these cheese boats. You’re gonna have leftovers, especially when you count how much stomach space the cabbage and rice take up. You are not gonna leave here with an empty stomach, no matter which katsu you order. Doubly so if you get the cheese katsu.
Leftovers are great, but I feel like this one fits particularly well to sharing. It’s best when straight out of the fryer, and reheating it is gonna kill the quality a bit. So get somebody you love and eat a half pound of cheese together. There’s nothing more romantic. I’m not saying you can’t down this yourself. I’ve seen some of you people. I’m saying you shouldn’t. If you do, I hope you don’t mind the enema you’ll need for your impacted colon. I guess some of you are into that.
Besides, if you share it, you’ll have more room for the delicious starters here! Speaking of…
Portobello Fries
LOOK. JUST. LOOK AT THEM.
These are not sakutto. These are very greasy. Oil dripping down your chin and coating your throat hole. You didn’t care about your arterial health anyway, so who cares?
They are SO FREAKING GOOD.
I’m discovering that everything at Ton Shou is about contrasting textures. The chef here understands, above all, that texture is the primary vehicle of flavor. Texture is what flavor drives into the parking lot before flying out through the windshield and striking a rolling pose in your mouth, guns blazing. Most of the menu seems to fit that paradigm.
Every bite is a hot mushroom explosion of flavor and juice. The crunchiness of the panko counters the delicate mushroom amazingly well, and everything is intensified with a well-salted and MSG’ed seasoning. These are so addictive. My only complaint is that I didn’t get ten orders.
One little note on something I appreciate — these are not some Sysco, IQF mushrooms. The easiest way to tell is that on multiple trips, the portobellos themselves are different sizes. The first time I got these, they were massive. Like, each “fry” was about five inches long. Ask me how I know. This time around, they clocked in at maybe three inches.
Best thing on the menu. And that’s a menu with the best katsu I’ve ever had. If you get this, you will not regret it. Mushroom haters will love this. Fried food haters will love this, despite them not being people. There’s no way to justify not trying these. It’s worth the trip for these alone.
Why doesn’t this place have a Michelin star again?
Pork Belly Skewer
I wanted to try something from the skewer menu and this sounded like a great way to compare this place to another of my favorite restaurants, 8 East over at the Circa on Fremont.
The pork belly offering at 8 East is my favorite dish on their menu, but it’s a completely different beast compared to this. It’s three times more expensive and contains about fifteen times as much pork belly. It’s also deep fried instead of grilled, and it’s slathered in an amazing tamarind sauce instead of naked sitting next to a lemon. Apples and oranges, in hindsight.
I’ll quit joking around. The pork belly skewer tasted great. It’s hard to mess up bacon, even if it’s uncured. This is a nice little two-biter (one-biter, if you’re me) that does its job and fills your mouth with porky goodness.
Now that said, that’s all it is. No uniqueness, no special seasonings, no sign of creativity, no love injected into it like everything else on the menu. I felt empty inside after eating it, and not just because it did nothing to fill me up. It just wasn’t worth $4.50. I can’t justify paying that for a couple bites of plain pork belly.
Now full disclosure — I was offered a tare flavor instead of salt with this pork belly skewer. That may have helped a bit, but I wanted to go with the pure savory version instead of sweet. I still don’t think that would change my opinion.
Skip this one. It’s the only downside on the entire menu for me, and it’s purely a value problem.
Takoyaki
I’ma be straight with you. I don’t like takoyaki. Get your gasps out now.
It’s not the octopus, either. I definitely don’t hate octopus, even if it’s near impossible to cook right. There’s a restaurant coming up early next year called Sol Agave that has a fantastic pulpo asado, and I’ll probably order it to show you guys. That’s octopus done right.
No, it’s the runniness. It’s a texture thing. With good takoyaki, the batter isn’t quite set in the middle, and I’m just not about that. Even if in the US, we cook it to hell until it’s firm, that’s supposedly not the proper way. I like to get takoyaki from Korean or Japanese BBQ restaurants, and then throw them on the grill to “finish” cooking. I know, I’m disgusting.
The takoyaki at Ton Shou is good takoyaki. In other words, not for me.
That didn’t stop me from trying it. Eating a whole one, in fact. I can appreciate good food, and this is so tasty. The outer shell has a crispness that lends a nice crunch when you bite in, and the filling oozes into your mouth in a pleasurable way. The katsuobushi topping adds some wonderful brininess, and the sauce hit me with savory notes. The, um, egg salad, underneath is actually a pleasant surprise. I didn’t understand its place, and as far as I’m aware, Japanese people wouldn’t either. But I’m not complaining. It’s delicious.
These little guys are two-biters. I didn’t catch the octopus in the first bite, but once it was in my mouth I found it was tender and lacked the rubbery quality of badly-prepared or raw tako. Very enjoyable bite. Please forgive my American sensibilities.
Overall, these are well worth it at just over $2.50 per ball. If they can please a non-enjoyer of takoyaki like me, they’re good enough for anyone.
Chicken Karaage
Nearly every culture on the planet has breaded chicken and fried it, whether coming up with the process independently or gleaning it from elsewhere. Karaage is Japan’s version of the dish. And like a lot of other fried foods, Japan got this one from the Portuguese traders who arrived in the 1500s. What we call generally call karaage (pronounced kah-rah-ah-geh, not kah-rah-gey) is actually tori karaage, but somehow in the States we got to a point where we didn’t bother specifying that the karaage is tori (chicken), and… You know what? I’m getting bored just typing all this. You’re not here for a history lesson.
Anyway.
This is some very tasty karaage. Go figure, a place that deep fries just about their entire menu is gonna have outstanding fried chicken. The little nuggets of joy are crispy, juicy, and scintillating, and despite the terminology I chose, taste nothing like chicken nuggets. Karaage is a completely unique experience in the fried chicken world, utilizing the same best-of-both-worlds crispy and tender counterplay that a lot of other things on the menu have going for them.
The sauce with them is basically a fry sauce (I refuse to use the term “thousand island”, thank you very much) with kewpie, ketchup, and a little bit of probably togarashi for spice. It actually falls into the background when you dip, with the overwhelming flavor of chicken taking over. This is a very good thing.
A solid offering. No notes. Worth ten bucks, for sure.
Izakaya? Iz-Incredible
During our dinner out on a Saturday night at Ton Shou, we ordered several drinks. They were all enjoyed. We ordered plenty of apps and eagerly devoured all of them. Everyone finished their katsu without a single to-go box. That says something, and not just that we’re a bunch of hungry anime nerds.
With the exception of the highway robbery that was that pork belly skewer, the menu screams value, and that’s saying something for a fancy Japanese sit down place that’s usually packed full of people. Maybe that’s why the place is never empty. For $30, I can get a mountain of katsu with all the fixings, an unforgettable meal and experience, and get full doing it. That’s not the easiest thing to find a half mile off the Vegas Strip. I mean for god’s sake, the Bacchanal buffet is over $100 after tax/tip and does not have food with this much love put into it.
That, and the service at Ton Shou is impeccable. Shout out to Yoomi, our server tonight, who wasn’t just doing her job well. She’s a super rad person overall, and it felt like we were being attended to by one of our friends. She deserves all of your kind words and thanks if you run into her. Truly the star of our meal.
I will be back here many, many times. In fact, this place makes me grateful I don’t live in Vegas, because I wouldn’t be able to avoid coming here weekly, if not more. I’m gonna need to try literally everything on the menu. Expect more reviews of the food here, because I can’t get enough.
This visit was just as magical as my first time here. It’s truly astounding to find a restaurant you fall in love with at first bite, and I rank this one near the top of mine. Hmm. Top three? Yeah, top three.
Wonder what katsu I’ll try next time? Probably the salmon.
Love and peace <3
