Casual Japanese restaurant chain creates a new genre of pork cutlet bowls.

Broadly speaking, katsudon (pork cutlet bowl) comes in two varieties. There’s tamagotoji katsudon, in which the cutlet is sort of wrapped in egg…

…and then there’s sauce katsudon, in which a special sauce, tasting kind of like a sweeter Worchester, is drizzled over the cutlet.

But now, here comes Japanese restaurant chain Fuji Soba with a brand-new category of pork cutlet bowl: ice cream katsudon.

Yep, that’s a pouch of confectioner Lotte’s Coolish drinkable ice cream being squeezed onto the cutlet, and specifically the brand’s whipped cream flavor. We suppose you could argue that this makes the Coolish Whipped Cream Katsudon, as it’s officially called, a variation on sauce katsudon, but it also has the egg accompaniment that you’d get in a traditional tamagotoji katsudon, so this new dish really is an unprecedented hybrid.

If all this talk of Fuji Soba putting ice cream in unexpected places sounds sort of familiar, it’s because this is actually the chain’s second time collaborating with Coolish, as for a limited time in 2024 they offered vanilla Coolish-enhanced chilled soba noodles.

▼ It wasn’t a simpler time, it was just a time that was crazy in a different way than now.

Between the two of them, though, ice cream makes more sense as a topping for katsudon than it does for soba, since there are sweet notes to katsudon sauce, whereas soba broth is more of a salty/savory/fish stock kind of thing. Fuji Soba says that the addition of ice cream adds to the richness flavor and decadence of the meal.

The ice cream itself isn’t too visually shocking either, since its color sort of blends into the white of the egg.

However, since we’re in uncharted culinary territory here, Fuji Soba serves the katsudon with the pouch of Coolish on the side, so that you can add whatever you feel is the appropriate amount, as well as choose whether you want to squeeze the ice cream right into the bowl or add little dollops to individual morsels after you’ve picked them up with your chopsticks. The chain’s official recommendation, though, is to use half of the ice cream pouch for the katsudon, with the remaining half ostensibly to be enjoyed by itself as a dessert.

The iconoclastic nature of this dish, so crazy it might work or perhaps just so crazy, means that it’s only being served at a limited number of Fuji Soba restaurants, in limited quantities, and for a limited time. The 770-yen (US$5) Coolish ice cream katsudon is available from now until February 28 at the Akasaka, Ikebukuro, and Gotanda Fuji Soba branches, all in downtown Tokyo, with a total of 10 available per day at each location on a first-come, first-served basis.

Related: Fuji Soba location list
Source: Lotte
Top image: Fuji Soba
Insert images: SoraNews24, Lotte (1, 2)
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