I thought it was tonkatsu. - Milanese-style cutlet

Dining in a foreign land was a series of wonders, but sometimes, I would miss the taste of Japan uncontrollably. One day, I found the words "Cotoletta alla Milanese" on the menu and pointed to it without hesitation. A cutlet. I was sure something close to that tonkatsu would come out. That's what I thought.

When the plate was brought to me, I let out an involuntary sound. It was thin. And large. A single piece fried to a golden brown hung over both ends of the oval plate.

There was no sauce. No mountain of shredded cabbage either. All that accompanied it was a single wedge of lemon.

When I put my knife to it, it made a light, crisp sound. Perhaps because the breading was fried in butter, a rich aroma, different from regular oil, rose up. When I squeezed the lemon over it, the acidity cleanly cut through the lingering richness of the fat.

At that moment, I suddenly realized. Cutlet. Tonkatsu. The same dish had traveled across the sea to reach Japan, donned sauce, and became a companion to rice—the piece in front of me was, so to speak, a distant relative of tonkatsu.

When food crosses borders, it takes on the face of that land. In a corner of a foreign country where I didn't even speak the language, I saw in that piece hanging off the plate the long time the dish had traveled. I haven't made it at home lately, so I think I'll make Milanese-style cutlet for the first time in a while. I'll buy fresh lemons, too. My family doesn't like spicy or sour things,
so this is the tricky part. In that case, I'll just serve the lemon on the side.

With this, the "First Tastes" trilogy comes to an end. Starting tomorrow, I'll talk about the somewhat (no, quite) eccentric colleagues I met at the company in Milan. The first one up is the accounting guy who, when you make a mistake, tells you with a straight face, "If you do that again, I'll drop an atomic bomb on you."