Triple katsu plate and mini curry in Myeonmok, Seoul: Katsu Monster

Why Katsu Monster near Myeonmok Station is a katsu place, not a tonkatsu place

You remember how I said I was craving ramen and just went and had ramen? Well, the next commandment from a Japanese food lover is katsu. Hehe.

Foodies out there, do you know the difference between tonkatsu and katsu? (I know they're technically the same dish.) Tonkatsu is kind of like something you'd get in a school cafeteria — soaked in sauce, that old-school Western-style restaurant vibe from Reply 1988. Katsu, on the other hand, is cut into slices, slightly rare, crispy on the outside, but moist where it's sliced — the kind of thing that just demands to be eaten with salt and wasabi. Haha.

Honestly I love both. They're different kinds of charm so I pick depending on my mood, but today was one of those days where only hot, crispy, crust-crunchy-inside-moist authentic Japanese katsu — as if made by a craftsman in Japan — would do. So off I went. And the foodie's pick was...

Right here! I visited the Myeonmok branch of Katsu Monster! Please check the attached map link for exact hours and location.

Takeout, delivery, and dine-in are all available :) I ate in-store, and even while I was eating, delivery orders kept pouring in. But every time an order came in, they fried it fresh, so both my food and the delivery orders had that fresh-out-of-the-fryer feel.

Seating at Katsu Monster Myeonmok: all bar tables

Every table at Katsu Monster Myeonmok was a bar table — window seats and counter seats. Just a heads-up that it might be a bit uncomfortable if you're coming as a group or a large party.

It was such a hot day, and even the bamboo out front already gave off a cool vibe, but once I stepped inside, the AC was blasting and it was genuinely freezing — in the best way. I felt like I could actually live again, haha.

Salt, wasabi, cabbage sauce, katsu sauce — all set up around the bar tables.

I stared at the menu photos and agonized for a while. Hirekatsu? Rosukatsu? Cheese katsu? Or... all of them? After much deliberation, I ended up going with the triple menu that has all three ^__^

What comes with the triple menu: mini cold soba, rice and soup

A seasoned diner prepares in advance. Water, dipping sauce, and mental readiness — and then, while waiting,

today's star arrives. Maybe because it was freshly fried, steam was rising off it, and the visuals were genuinely insane.

It came with mini cold soba, rice, soup, kimchi, and cabbage salad — the portion was genuinely generous! And the cold soba was so good I'd want to order it on its own next time. The side dish that steals the main show, haha.

Hirekatsu and rosukatsu with salt and wasabi, cheese katsu that pulls into long strings

Everyone, just look at that perfect ratio of fat to lean meat. Savory, clean, I could finish this whole thing solo (positive). My first bite was plain — no dipping, straight up — and it was just too delicious. So I immediately went full salt-and-wasabi mode. The pink salt maximized the savoriness, and honestly it was so good. The wasabi cut through the richness too, so it just kept going down.

And the crazy cheese (pppppositive) — stretching like something out of a mukbang video. Chewy enough to still stretch even when it cooled down.

Adding a mini curry and dipping the rice in it

The cold soba plus the mini curry I ordered as an add-on. I really love curry too — the spicy, clean flavor unique to Japanese-style curry was perfect, and dipping rice into it made it genuinely JMT.

This is about the right soaking ratio. Foodie moves, right?

Salt and wasabi, or katsu sauce? Your call... I chose both. I went back and forth in a trance, inhaling everything, haha.

Whenever things got a bit rich, I washed it down with zero-calorie cola and took bites of kimchi in between, polishing everything off neatly. Finished it all off with one last gulp of the remaining zero cola — today too, I ate really, truly, very well. Nom nom.