Berlin, August 29th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – Parts of Berlin’s Schöneberg borough are in Arab and Turkish hands today. On the northern part of Hauptstrasse, one of the main traffic arteries down there, you would find places like “Gümus Bakery”, “Sengüloglu Antep Baklava”, the “Al-Khawali Restaurant”, the “Pasha Grill” and the Emir Sultan Mosque. When you ride your bicycle around the corner into Winterfeldtstrasse, you will bump into yet another place with a halal certificate in the window, but this one is very different.
People who take a more thorough look at “Kaiza”, a little and inconspicuous mixture between a proper restaurant and a fast food place, will notice another note on the window: “Tori-Katsu [Japanese for “bird cutlet”] loves world peace.” Well, it might, before it gets fried and consumed. By now, “Tori-Katsu” is both this restaurant’s bestseller and its name.
Everyone goes to eat bird cutlet at “Tori-Katsu”. Well, everyone who knows about its existence. This applies since 1968, when this place was founded by Kaiza Murata from Tokyo. It became a sensation. Back then, it was West-Berlin’s most exotic restaurant. That is because nobody had seen a Japanese fast food place outside of Japan before. Today “Kaiza” or “Tori-Katsu” is being run by former employees who purchased the restaurant from its founder. He is above 80 by now. In spite of his age, he does come along to work for a few hours per week.
Giant Spring Rolls
Sure, they offer some vegan variation of their Japanese Schnitzel, but “Tori-Katsu” is the dish almost everyone orders. For a few Euro, you will get a deep-fried “bird cutlet” on rice, with soy sauce or gravy. The cabbage salad is optional. So is the little paper cup with hot soup. Feeding two adults at this place will hardly be more than 20 Euro, soft drinks included.
The combination consisting of the fried bird, the rice and the cabbage does taste good. If that’s not what you’re into, there is an alternative: giant spring rolls. Two of those will even fill a 7-foot-tall individual weighing 250 pounds. They do sell quite a few of those too.
During the cold season, Berliners or visitors who intend to eat right there at the restaurant should line up for one of the five tables first. Once you conquered one of them, you can go to the counter to order. They accept cash only. In summer, it is a bit easier since they have a few tables with benches on the street.
“Tori” vs. “Ton”
On a regular basis, huge AMG/Mercedes limousines stop in front of “Tori-Katsu”. Arabs leave the car and enter the place. Some ten minutes later, they leave again, with several plastic bags full of halal Japanese Schnitzel meals. The other customers are people from the neighborhood and beyond who seem to know exactly what they want since they’ve had it many times before. And there are first-timer visitors: “Oh! So, this place is Japanese? Where is the Sushi then? Ha ha ha.”
“Tori-Katsu”, the “bird cutlet”, is a variation of a Japanese tradition known as “Ton-Katsu”. The latter basically is a reinvention of a European cutlet dish. “Ton” stands for pork. In Berlin, they offer the chicken variant, which obviously is halal. It could be kosher too if it was certified.
According to a sign on the wall, “Tori-Katsu”‘s philosophy consists of several aspects. The list, in shaky German, says “delicious”, “friendly price”, “freshly prepared”, “preferred by world religions”, “clean and hygienic” as well as “kind and polite”. It also says “garantili herkes”, which is Turkish and means “guaranteed for everyone”.
