2022.01.17
Text: Yuko Shibukawa Photography: Yumiko Miyahama
Tonkatsu Bento with sauce and mustard costs JPY 780 including tax. You can also take out tonkatsu alone for JPY 600 including tax.
Wayo Ryori Kimura is located in an alleyway just across from the Kyobashi intersection towards Ginza. In a city where skyscrapers are replacing the old ones, a two-story building with wooden latticework and stone features a calligraphy sign, and I smile to see that such a restaurant still stands.
Gazing at the seasonal flowers arranged in the bay window, I pass through the navy-blue curtains and pull open the sliding door. At lunchtime, customers come and go in and out of the small shop centered around a counter. Luckily, I sat at a single available seat left by the wall. The interior of the restaurant may be old, but there is not a trace of oiliness that is common in long-established restaurants specializing in fried food, and it is clear that every corner has been well-maintained.
Like many others, I ordered the Tonkatsu Teishoku (set meal with pork cutlet) and waited for a few minutes. While I was fiddling with my smartphone, a tray was brought to me. Tonkatsu covered in breadcrumbs, was served on a fluffy pile of shredded cabbage. A small bowl of salad, red miso soup, pickles, and shiny rice. Nothing more should be added or taken away. It’s a perfect formation.
Coarse breadcrumbs make a crunchy sound in my mouth and mix with the pork fat. Although I like thick gourmet pork cutlets, this light texture is just right for everyday eating. The red miso soup and salad are both delicious and comforting. And all in all, it’s only JPY 980. If you want takeout, it’s priced at JPY 780, without the red miso soup.
If you want to eat something decent, you can buy some for yourself or your family. You can also give some to a busy colleague for lunch. Nowadays, these casual and conscientious restaurants are rare. Especially as it’s located in a prime location in the city center.
When I requested an interview, the owner, Yoshiyuki Kimura, first asked, “Are you sure you want our restaurant?” Compared to other restaurants, the restaurant doesn’t have any outstanding features. Simply steadily protecting our reputation in this location – I felt his humility from his comment. Wanting to interview him even more, I persisted, saying, “Please tell me more about it and link it to the history of the town.”
On the day of the interview, in addition to Yoshiyuki, his mother Toshiko, the proprietress who has run the restaurant since she married into the family in the 1950s joined. Yoshiyuki took over the restaurant about 25 years ago. When his father fell ill, he resigned as an engineer at a manufacturer and joined the restaurant as the third owner.
For a while, the restaurant was only open during the day. Yoshiyuki attended a culinary school to learn Japanese cuisine where he learnt how to hold a kitchen knife first. Since reopening in the evenings as a Japanese restaurant, his two younger sisters had cooked at lunchtime, and Yoshiyuki in the evening.
Toshiko told me the restaurant had been a liquor store originally before the war.
“At that time, alcohol, miso, and soy sauce were all sold by weight. Apprentices lived and worked on the second floor and went around to take orders from the neighborhood. During the war, they started serving small dishes. At that time, sometimes they run out of alcohol. When they got some, they notified their regulars that they have some. They offered glasses of sake to customers who come in. Nowadays, even liquor stores have a small counter where you can drink alcohol. It must have been something like that. I heard that they started serving snacks because they thought it would be lonely to have nothing there.”
After the war, the business changed its model to a restaurant but continued to do business. As “Sukiyaki Kimura” is printed on the old wrapping paper, Yoshiyuki speculates that “It seems that at one time it operated as a sukiyaki restaurant.” After Yoshiyuki’s father, the second owner, trained at a Western restaurant, the restaurant changed its focus to tonkatsu.
When Toshiko started working at the store, Daiei’s headquarters was located in Kyobashi. Actors on screen often came to the restaurant. “I wonder if people today don’t know of names like Raizo Ichikawa or Hiroshi Kawaguchi. Fujiko Yamamoto also came once,” Toshiko said, rattling off the names of famous actors one after the other. Apparently, Yukio Mishima once visited for lunch.
More surprisingly, the building hasn’t changed since then. Probably built after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the building passed recent earthquake resistance inspections. The building was so sturdy that not even a single glass was knocked over during the Great East Japan Earthquake, supporting firmly the restaurant’s history. However, Toshiko said, “It was only recently that I began to think of this old building as an asset.”
“While the surrounding buildings were being replaced one after another, I felt embarrassed that ours was the only one that looked old. We were told a lot, such as installing an automatic door. But we didn’t feel up to it. Then, we heard we couldn’t get the same wooden entrance door or milky glass again. Now, we want to make as little change as possible and use it with care.”
When the interior was renewed about 20 years ago, they also tried to preserve the old image as much as possible. In the tatami room on the second floor, they decided to prepare chairs and tables in consideration of elderly customers, but they reused the tops of the original desks and changed them into low tables. The ceiling was made of wicker, the walls were lacquered, and the interior was finished to match the old fixtures. The restaurant’s unchanged appearance has not only been the result of the passage of time, but also of the accumulation of such meticulous considerations.
“Perhaps what’s unique about our restaurant is that we don’t try to be eccentric or chase trends,” said Yoshiyuki. The same is true of its building and taste.
He inherited from his father “persistence to ingredients.” Yoshiyuki’s father would go to Tsukiji Market with the head chef of Yoshino Sushi, a restaurant a few doors down that is now defunct, to learn how to identify fish. Yoshino Sushi was a famous restaurant where Jiro Ono of Sukiyabashi Jiro trained. Yoshiyuki also accompanied his father to the market when he was young. Even though the market has relocated, he still goes to Toyosu every day to stock up on meat. He has been using selected meat from the same butcher his father had used.
He uses corn salad oil for deep frying tonkatsu, which gives a light taste so that you can eat it every day. Of course, he filters the oil every day, and never forgets to keep it in good condition. Customers unconsciously pick up on this honesty from the food, and it is probably this that keeps them coming back to the restaurant.
“I wanted to make our restaurant the kind of place people want to come back to, rather than the kind of place people go to once a year,” said Toshiko. That’s why the customer service is so natural.
“Well, it’s tiring to try to show off or make yourself look good. We don’t give any special treatment to anyone who comes. So maybe that’s why customers feel more at ease.”
That’s why there are regulars who have been patronizing the restaurant for two or even three generations, as well as famous people who come in secret. Then everyone took a breather, enjoying the taste as it familiarized their tongues, and headed home. Toshiko concluded her talk with these words:
“We only offer good food to the extent that we can. It’s not enough to just make a store bigger. If our customers can enjoy something that we are satisfied with and are happy with it, then there’s nothing that could make us happier.”
Conscience of the Showa era. The word suddenly came to mind after the interview. The disappearing goodness of the era resides in this space, its food, and its people. It is sure to be a comfortable and relaxing experience not just for those who know the Showa era but for everyone.
Wayo Ryori Kimura
Address
3-6-2 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku
Tel
+81 (0)3-3561-0912
Business hours
11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (LO) and 5 to 9 p.m. (LO 8 p.m.)
Regular holidays
Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays
Website