Buka Bareng Blogger - Katsusei (Grand Indonesia Ramadhan Rhapsody)

I often went to malls and found Katsusei signboard. To be honest, I was pretty curious to come in. But there's always reason not to. As I know, Katsusei is the first restaurant in Jakarta that give you a different experience of katsu dining. They have special spice. Fortunately, this Ramadhan month, Grand Indonesia came up with series of events called Ramadhan Rhapsody. The event itself is held from 6th August to 6th Sept 2011,with a lot of special events like Ramadhan Fashion Week (14 designers showed their latest collection), Bedug Special Show (I heard there were 32 cool drummers from bands played 14 drums together), Ramadhan Kids Activity, A Musical Show: The desert dream - A journey to Middle East Secret, Middle East Dance, Ramadhan Food Festival and sweepstakes for G-Shopper Rewards.

Grand Indonesia also held 3 bloggers break fasting dinners, in Tairyo, Katsusei and Jun Njan. Can't you imagine, 3 different oriental foods in a row. Wooh!

Fortunately, I got the Katsusei one. As I always eager to try their cutlets, so I was so happy. :)

First I came, we took picture in front of main entrance (there was a kinda backdrop to take pictures), then we got a seat and they serve this sweet warm tea. Well, actually this was for break fasting, so our stomach didn't shock before we eat solid food. Anyway, I am not an expert in tea. So I wouldn't say anything about the tea. For me, it tasted nice. Not too aqueous and not too thick.

This was our menu that day. I was so excited! :D

Katsusei is so Japanese. They don't provide tajil. But for us, (as it was a break fasting dinner), they made it!! Wohooo! They're so kind, right? :))

The tajil contained banana, jackfruit, and palm seeds. Combined with coconut milk and palm sugar. Slurp!

Left- Mr. Adhi Tawakal (PR of Grand Indonesia) and Manager of Katsusei. They talked about the history of katsu. Cool!

While listening to the talks, we got edamame. The edamame was cold. But pretty good to tickle our appetite.

Look! First I saw this, I was very curious what it is and function.

Meet Ms. Nuniek! She's representative from Fimela.com (partner of Grand Indonesia in this event). She was so smart and friendly.

Chef Erwin from Toranomon (Katsusei sister brand in Ilham Putra Wicaksana) was about to share his knowledge to us about wagyu. I was soooooo excited. I thought I'm gonna be smarter after this dinner. lol

Word "wagyu" come from "wa" which means Japan and "gyu" means beef. Literally, wagyu means Japanese beef. First developed in Japan, but nowadays, usually the cow bred in Australia, USA, and New Zealand. What makes them different from another beef is the cow is live to relax. Seriously, I even got jealous with their life.lol. The only eat, drink (sometimes beer), and got massages. No working. That's why their meat is flexible, tender, and fatty. They got massage in order to balancing their fat through all over their body. Maybe my owners must get one, so their fat not only settled on me (their tummy). lol.

These are some part of wagyu. Wagyu is the recommended menu in Toranomon. As wagyu is a good quality of beef, they don't need extreme spice for seasoning. Hey, their gave us some tips. To decrease the smell of beef, you just need to put sesame, black pepper, and salt.

Eating time!! I was so happy. muahahaha. First appertizer was Chawan Mushi. I loved it. It was sooooooooo soft. They put prawn and mushroom in it. Felt like I found treasures while digging the egg. lol.

Agedashi Tofu. I believe they made the tofu with special recipe. It was so good! The tofu was so soft and tasted savory. The sauce also nice, not too strong, but that's why i like it.

Look. This was the wagyu shown before. Now they had turned to be grill wagyu and ready to be eaten. Yeah!

Wagyu beef has 12 grade. And this one was 9 grade. Damn! So good! Now I could say another beef is not good just because I had tasted this. FYI, this 9 grade wagyu costs about 600K IDR per kilo. Hmmm...

Original Udon. To be honest, I love the texture. Not too chewy, so suitable for us whose getting tired after work whole day. Unfortunately, the broth was too salty for me. :(

Anyway, I was pretty amazed at their boiled egg. The yolk's texture was very very soft and tender. I believe they have a trick. :)

In Indonesia, we called it 'ulekan'. Wahahaha. This is like bowl and a wood, the function is to destrot the sesame. As written above, sesame is one of powerful seasoning. You'll found the purpose of this sesame later.

This was a special sauce for katsu. Only available in Katsusei. According to the manager, there's no other restaurant has this sauce. I was very curious how it tasted.

Katsu Platter. You may not find this dish on menu. All of these dishes were exclusively adjusted for us in this event. So the other dishes has been decreased in size, so we could tried a lot of dishes. This katsu wasn't get anything decreased, but we got chicken, beef, scallop and shrimp in one plate! Yuhuuu. Just for fun, I'd like to make a list from the one I love the most to the least: Chicken, scallop, shrimp, beef.

Maybe beef wasn't made to be fried. It's better to be grilled. The beef was a bit hard and tasteless. :|

The chicken was very good. Savory and juicy. Especially when I dip it into the sauce. Wooow!

The scallop was also nice.

I usually love shrimp, but I don't know, maybe because I ate it for the latest one, so I got already full. As all of these cutlets had the same ingredients for the fried dough, they tasted almost the same. The difference is only the texture of the meat.

Overall, I love these cutlets. Just the portion, after all the appetizers and udon, was too much for me.

They called it Houjicha. It was tea. Tasted a bit bitter. They said, it was useful to dispose the fat (from the former fried cutlets).

Olala! Dessert time. Hey, I love their mango pudding. I wish I could take it home too. :p

Tasted so fluffy and a bit sour, brought refreshment to my full tummy. The fla was not help anything I guess. The pudding was good enough to stand alone. :p

Macha Ice Cream. I don't like green tea. But this macha wasn't smell like green tea. It's more light. Not only in smell, but also in taste. Not too sweet, but still creamy. Love this.

And we also got goodie bag. Wohoo!

In the goodie bag, there's some vouchers from some tenants in Grand Indonesia. Me super happy. hihi :))

You may see, there were BlackCurrant, Smooch, Kamikaze, Ilham Perdana Wicaksana (could be use in Toranomon and Katsusei), Soup Spoon, and also we got Katsusei's loyalty card! *big grin*

Cute gimmick! When we first come, they asked us to took pict. In the end of agenda, we got our pict in tumblr and mini bag. Uber cute! Actually there's a place where we could slide the photo in. Plus, the printed out our photo and put it in a kinda envelope that could stand (there's the sustainer), so we could put it on the table. hihi.