Fusion Sando (フュージョンサンド)

In October 2018 Time Out Los Angeles reported that two chefs, Akira Akuto and Nick Montgomery, had opened a ten-seat counter at 1463 Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, styled on the Japanese convenience store and sold from a walk-up window. Their sandwiches were Japanese in form: a panko-fried pork cutlet with shredded cabbage and Bulldog sauce, a soft egg salad built around a jammy egg, an eggplant cutlet. The bread came from Bub and Grandma's, a Los Angeles bakery, whose milk loaf took the place a Tokyo shop would give to shokupan. That swap defines the fusion sando: a Japanese construction carried to a new city and rebuilt on whatever local bakery has the right soft, tight crumb.

The eggplant cutlet shows how the crossing works on the cutting board. Time Out described the slices as marinated in a burnt-onion dashi, then breaded and fried, and later coverage says they are cooked to order for each sandwich. Soaked eggplant fries up tender and savory, with a faint smoke from the onion, and it takes the pork's place while the rest of the build stays put. Cabbage gives a cold, squeaky snap under the hot crust, the brown tonkatsu-style sauce runs sweet and tangy into the crumb, and the crustless bread flexes with the bite. Each mouthful goes crunch, then cabbage water, then sauce, then bread that gives way like a pillow.

The reconciling ingredient is usually mayonnaise. Japanese mayonnaise, with Kewpie the best-known brand and reportedly sold since 1925, is made with egg yolks and a milder vinegar, so it reads rounder and eggier than the American jar. A thin coat on the bread seals the crumb from the sauce and adds a fatty rounding that lets a sharper element, whether Bulldog, a pickle, or chili, sit next to something this soft. When the barrier is missing, a wet filling soaks the bread within a few minutes and the slice tears when lifted. Wrapped tightly and cut with a hot, wet knife, the same sandwich survives a half hour in a bag.

The eggplant version starts the night before. The slices are salted and left to soak in seasoned dashi, as the Echo Park chefs describe, and they have to be patted dry before the flour, egg, and panko go on, or the coating slides off in the oil and the cutlet comes out patchy and greasy. Fried right, the crust turns deep gold and sounds hollow when tapped. The bread gets butter or a film of mayonnaise, then a spoonful of Bulldog sauce, a handful of finely shredded cabbage, and the cutlet, pressed once so the layers grip. The crusts come off and the knife goes through the middle. A sturdy sourdough in place of the soft, slightly sweet loaf turns the cutlet into a hard mouthful that squeezes the cabbage out the sides.

The borrowing runs in both directions, which keeps the category from settling on one recipe. An American bakery's loaf can carry a yōshoku cutlet, and a Japanese roll can carry flavors from elsewhere. In Japan the same impulse predates the label by generations: the ham-and-egg sandwich and the cutlet sandwich were already Westernized Japanese cooking. Shops abroad now treat the sando as a ready-made vehicle for local ideas, with builds that run from tomato-jam cutlets to kimchi slaw, many of them limited-run specials that come and go with a season. A good one keeps every borrowed element tastable: the sauce sharp, the cabbage cold, the crust loud, and the soft bread quiet underneath.

Origin and history

Pork cutlet in Tokyo is commonly traced to Renga-Tei in Ginza, which is credited with serving it around 1899, and the cutlet sandwich became a standard cafe item over the following decades. The yōshoku tradition that produced it was already a Japanese reading of European cooking, so a Japanese sandwich in Los Angeles is a second crossing of the same road.

Before Los Angeles, the format had been circulating in Sydney cafes, where katsu sando reportedly appeared in 2015 and 2016, and in other cities whose opening dates are unconfirmed. Konbi's opening date, by contrast, sits in print: Time Out reported the counter open in October 2018, with Akuto and Montgomery behind the window and the bread coming from across Los Angeles.

A year later Bon Appétit ranked it first on its 2019 Hot 10 list of America's best new restaurants, putting ten seats and a walk-up window on Sunset Boulevard at the head of the country's new openings. Time Out's opening report had already named what came through that window: the pork katsu with Bulldog sauce, the egg salad around a jammy egg, and the eggplant cutlet soaked in burnt-onion dashi, each one cut in half on Bub and Grandma's milk bread.