Saboten

My birthday treat with the Callars was scheduled on a Sunday lunch, but we got to Makati close to 1:30pm already.  We were hungry!  Mikey and I were even hungrier, as we had to park at the Link, which was a 10 minute walk away from Saboten, a franchise tonkatsu restaurant operated by the Raintree group. 

We started with plenty of cabbage salad in sesame seed sauce, and miso soup (included in the set meals).  Our tonkatsu came in different styles--plain fried, with egg, with curry sauce, and garnished with shredded radish (with grapefruit on the side).  The Japanese rice smelled wonderful and tasted great; the round grains and sticky consistency are qualities that I will sorely miss.  We ordered loin cuts instead of the tenderloin cuts (I must agree with the observation of the ladies that the added fat gives a more flavorful tonkatsu).

The chocolate cake wasn't bad, but I liked the macha lychee cake, which was quite unique.  Average spend is around P500 per head, because you can ask for added cabbage, soup and rice, you tummy can get quite full.  I understand from the food servers that the original Saboten outlet started in the sixties, and that the chain has around 500 shops in Japan (Saboten means "cactus" in Japanese).