The Pickup's Food coverage is brought to you by our sponsor Brut Hotel, presenting the Soundup Roundup on February 25.
“Better to do a good idea at an unbelievable level where you’ve looked at every single detail than add 15 ingredients and six edible flowers and have it cost way more than you want it to cost,” says chef Colin Sato of Et Al. “I want the half-price version that is just as good.”
He’s speaking literally about a katsu sando, a fried pork cutlet sandwich on white bread, one of the lunch offerings at Natsukashii, the first brick-and-mortar restaurant to spring from Tulsa chef collective Et Al., slated to open in March at 14 N. Cheyenne Ave., in the Gradient building. He’s also speaking generally about the cooking principles that will define the restaurant.
“A lot of our food is this way, where it just kind of looks like what it is,” Sato says. “It’s a fried pork chop sandwich, and when you look at it, you’ll be like, that is a fried pork chop sandwich.”
The magic happens on the first bite: in his words, “juicy and hot, perfectly seasoned, everything nicely balanced and cared for.” Excellent, but simple. Very Japanese … or Japanese-y, anyway.
Natsukashii’s Instagram describes it as an “all-day Japanese-y cafe and izakaya,” with the translations of the two Japanese words doing the heavy philosophical lifting—natsukashii: a positive nostalgia, and izakaya: stay-drink-place. That all-day descriptor is critical, too.