Where to Find Perfectly Fried and Beautifully Marbled Wagyu in Los Angeles

There is a specific expression of longing and slight desperation that plagues the face of someone waiting for a table in a restaurant between 7 and 8 pm. If you're sitting at one of the patio tables at Ten No Meshi, the new Wagyu katsu restaurant on Sawtelle Boulevard, it's an expression you'll become deeply familiar with. The group hanging around the entrance will stare without abandon, their eyes fixed on your Wagyu like laser beams throughout the meal.

With wait times typically exceeding an hour, you don't have the luxury of choosing your table when you're finally called. Just cross your fingers and toes that you know it's inside or that you're in a seat facing the back of the restaurant.

Ten No Meshi is the first Los Angeles outpost of a Wagyu katsu specialist from Kyoto, Japan. It arrives at a time when Wagyu is booming in Los Angeles, with high-quality beef filling everything from pitas to Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. It has become a superficial luxury for financiers and the type of diner who collects watches and shiny objects that move on four wheels. Ten No Meshi is making what should be a special occasion treat a little more accessible for the rest of us.

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Like many of the world's best Japanese restaurants, Ten No Meshi maintains an admirable level of specialization. The menu is based on sets of katsu, the Japanese dish of fried protein and panko, mostly pork or beef, served with rice, miso soup, shredded cabbage and the equivalent of a condiment bar on each table.

There are sets of A5 and American Wagyu, pork loin and tenderloin. At $57, the A5 may be the most affordable Wagyu filet mignon in town. But before the meat, there is seafood and a bit of theater.

About every five minutes, the attention of the entire dining room is drawn to the party that is about to receive their first dish of the set. A smiling waiter places a woven tray with bowls of panko-crusted scallops under a mesh dome on the table, then asks if it's ready.

“Three, two, one, Ten No Meshi! Yoisho! Hotate dashimasu [scallops coming]!”

A second waiter tops each scallop with a generous spoonful of ikura, delivering a pungent “yoisho” with each spoonful.

“'Yoisho' means 'let's go,'” explains director Takeshi Yamamura. “You say it when you put energy and enthusiasm into something.”

The words are spoken with an enthusiasm that borders on vertigo, and the emotion permeates the dining room like a high of contact.

Ikura are slightly sweet and umami, with gauzy membranes that burst and fill the mouth with an intense salty flavor. Juicy and salty, they greatly enhance the natural sweetness of the scallop, served as a plump nugget under a layer of crispy panko. If it were possible to order a giant plate of fried scallops and ikura for dinner, my entire group would have shouted “yoisho!”

A bottle of green tea. Manager Takeshi Yamamura. The fried ebi with panko fried shrimp. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

The rest of the game arrives in an avalanche of platters, plates and bowls. A sliced ​​Kurobuta beef or pork chop on a raised wire plate with a pile of cabbage and a cup of demiglace. On the side, a bowl of steamed rice, miso soup, a small bowl of shredded daikon with yuzu, and another with a liquid poached egg for dipping. Each diner is given a hot stone to ignore or use to finish cooking the chops to the desired doneness. On the table are self-serve containers with dashi soy sauce, garlic soy sauce, regular and spicy tonkatsu, salt and wasabi. Everything except the scallop, chop and poached egg can be replenished upon request and free of charge.

If you prefer pork, the tenderloin is the more tender of the two cuts available, although on multiple occasions, the meat lost all its moisture in the fryer and the panko breading came off completely. But served as katsudon, under an avalanche of sweet and salty dashi broth, onions, and beaten egg, pork can be a desirable topper to a pile of white rice.

Wagyu is the main protagonist of the menu, both American and A5 are eaten like pieces of meat and butter. The steaks come from Miyazaki and Kagoshima, two prefectures on the island of Kyushu revered for their Wagyu. The meat is coated in what Yamamura describes as “special flour from Japan,” then dipped in “melted butter from Japan” and breaded in “a certain size of fresh panko.” The chops are fried in a bubbling vat of palm oil, beef tallow and lard.

The Kurobuta Rosu Katsudon from Ten No Meshi.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The specific size of the fresh panko creates an exaggerated, feathery coating for a delicate crunch. The American Wagyu, priced at $44, will satisfy those looking for the fundamental characteristics of Waygu beef: highly marbled and extremely tender with a robust, meaty flavor. If you can afford the upgrade, the A5 is a worthwhile treat, with succulent pieces of steak so soft and flavorful they almost dissolve on your tongue.

Yamamura insists there is no wrong way to eat Wagyu katsu. Carve it into the stone, if you wish. Pass it through the liquid egg and then pass it through the garlic soy sauce. I like to swap bites of salt and grated wasabi with pieces dipped in the demiglace. Perhaps the sauce is a nod to tonkatsu's French origins, created as a Japanese version of côtelette de veau, a beef cutlet breaded and fried in butter. The Ten No Meshi version of the mother sauce channels a silky tomato meat sauce that you can use as a dipping sauce for Wagyu or whatever else is on the table.

If you drink beer or appreciate the effervescence of bubbles while devouring a meal prepared primarily in the fryer, the craving for an Asahi will come on fast and strong mid-meal. While Ten No Meshi awaits its beer and wine permit, there's an excellent Sencha iced tea, herbaceous and refreshing enough to restore a semblance of post-fried balance to the palate. And there's Ramune, the Japanese soft drink sealed with a glass marble. You use the lid to dip the marble into the inner chamber, releasing the carbonation from the drink. It's sweet, citrusy, and the marble sounds as you drink it. Yoisho!