KATSUDON is a very popular food anywhere in Japan.  Also the cooking style is not different much although many common food of Japan often have different ways of cooking locally in each area.

Katsu means cutlet, probably the imported English pronunciationbecame Japanized in pronunciation, which settled in Katsu, I think.  When cutlet dish started, meat they could use for it was pork maybe. So when we simply say Katsu, it means Pork Cutlet. When Chicken, we need to say Chicken Kastu ( don) , and when Beef, we say Beef katsu (don).

Don means the round bowl.  When “don” is attached in the end of dish name, it always means the dish with the bowl (don).  Katsudon is for pork cutlete bowl, and Tendon is for tempura bowl ( ten means tempura here).  In the bowl, there always is rice under the cutlet, tempura, or anything. When we say Magurodon, there is rice in the bowl and over the rice, there is Tuna (maguro).  Then it correctly means Tuna & Rice in a Bowl.

So Katsudon correctly means Pork Cutlet & Rice in a bowl.

Katsu(pork) is deep fried with crumb first, then it’s boiled with onion and egg with teriyaki style sweet soy sauce.

Katsudon usually is very good food, but if you accidentally choose a bad restaurant, they might use bad pork, or they don’t know the best sauce taste. Then the taste becomes terrible. It’s a simple food, but when we chose a restaurant, we should care if they are specializing Katsu dish or not.

If they are, for example, Tonkatsu restaurants, the meat would be OK. Tonkatsu means Pork Cutlet.  Not Katsudon, so Tonkatsu is like a fried cutlet.  Tonkatsu restarurants usually deal with Katsudon too.

Also old soba noodle restaurants sometimes cook Katsudon. Some may think it’s strange why old Soba noodle restaurants have fried cutlet food. Soba noodle’s sauce is close to Katsudon’s sauce. So some of Soba noodle restaurants started Katsudon after the war.  It’s a historical story.

Like that, Soba noodle restaurants often have Oyakodon ( Chicken is used instead of fried pork cutlet) or Tendon ( Tempura is used instead of fried pork cutlet).

Once you get accustomed to Japanese food, you will understand how to choose a good restaurant for your today’s food.

For recipe, this video seems to be available although English pronunciation here isn’t good enough. I don’t recommend you cook it before you taste it at a restaurant. Video looks simple but tasting is not easy at all. Even Japanese can’t always make it good.