Tonkatsu Ganko Nara — Restaurant in Nara

The food is good, service is decent.

Their menu has English on it and our server spoke English. The menu could be structured better as it was a little confusing because as you flip the pages the pictures repeat and look the same. The first set of pages is their Kurobuta pork, pricier but finer, then followed by pages of their regular pork. You can get pork loin or the leaner pork fillet. They also serve 100, 150, and 200g portions. We struggled a little figuring this all out. When I looked over I saw the server watching us and waiting. I don't go anywhere assuming staff speaks English, so I always try and figure things out on my own. It turns out the server spoke English well and I think they could have offered to explain the menu to us instead of watching us struggle.

We were seated at the front counter that faces the window into the kitchen where you can watch them make the meals. I enjoyed watching them prepare. We were not asked whether we wanted to sit at the counter or at table.

The place could be a little cleaner, there was a tiny bug in the window of the kitchen but these kinds of things don't really bother me. I go to hole in the wall and mom and pop places often enough.

My partner ordered the curry option and I had the egg on top option, both Kurobuta pork loin. The curry came with cabbage but no soup and my set came with soup but no cabbage. It was unclear on the menu how the set worked with these dishes. We shared our soup and cabbage since the menu said free refill.

The tonkatsu was good but not excellent (two bites were all fat, could have been juicier), I've had quite a bit of tonkatsu in my life though. The miso soup was excellent. It had little mushrooms in it and no junks of tofu (was broken down) and I love that. If you order egg on top make sure you eat it quickly to preserve the tonkatsu crunch as the eggs are quite soft/creamy.

Now knowing that our server spoke English and didn't check in on us once we started eating to see if everything was okay makes me a little disappointed.

We were fortunate to have arrived at a time when there was no line.

Overall I would recommend this place if your cool with a more casual experience, there isn't much of a wait, and you aren't a tonkatsu obsessed person...

‼️ DO NOT GO HERE!!! Tonkatsu Ganko was the most unsanitary restaurant that I went to during my trip to Japan (and that’s coming from a Japanese American).

To start, my water cup had a sesame seed on the inside when it arrived, so they clearly didn’t clean it properly. And then when my chicken katsu curry came, I noticed that there was a literal FLY fried into the chicken katsu on the top. I called over a worker to tell them and they barely acknowledged it and just walked away with my food. I contemplated leaving the restaurant, but they brought over a new plate even though I had already long lost my appetite by that time. I didn’t touch the chicken katsu and barely even ate anything on my plate because I was disgusted.

Then, upon bringing my receipt to the register, the worker didn’t even bring up the issue and my sister had to request that the dish be removed from our receipt since they clearly lacked basic restaurant etiquette. There was also so much hesitation from the workers to even have my dish removed from the receipt (we literally had to ask multiple times), when it should’ve been removed by them in the first place.

I would NEVER recommend this establishment to anyone. An absolute...

we came here for dinner during our day trip to nara! imo it was one of the best tonkatsu sets we had. there wasn't any wait on a weekday evening but they did have to split our party of 5 into 3 at a booth and 2 at the bar.

they had clear instructions on how to make your sauce (which we hadn't gotten until... that day) and i think the meals were good value. iirc i got the prime loin 100g and had asked for half a bowl of rice since i usually don't finish and they followed thru! the pork was perfectly cooked and everything else on the tray was great.

they have a pretty good english menu and are friendly to tourists. most of the staff were nice, but they don't check up on you very often. when we asked for our tea refilled, they were very quick to do it but one lady in particular kind of just threw it at us? i didn't even get to finish asking lol. but the other two staff who took our order and seated...