Last year, I had the pleasure of attending Taste of Aberdeen, a Chinesebites.com media extravaganza where 60 influencers indulged in 30 dishes by 20 Aberdeen Food Court vendors over 2.5 hours. At that time, I was introduced to Saboten, one of the food court vendors that specializes in tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlet). While Saboten has just one location at Aberdeen Centre, they are in fact one of the largest Tonkatsu chains with over 500 shop in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong.
Saboten Menu
Saboten offers a variety of pork cutlet sets like the tenderloin set, loin katsudon (pork cutlet rice bowl) and curry. The entrees are budget friendly and are usually less than $10. According to their website, their tonkatsu is made of premium aged pork lightly coated with house-made bread crumbs to ensure the juice of the cutlet is preserved. The tonkatsu comes with special sauce made of onions, carrots, tomatoes, apples and over 10 different spices to bring out the best flavour.
What I Tried
At the Taste of Aberdeen event, I sampled the Saboten Set which included deep fried pork loin, shrimp and pork tenderloin. As I was sharing this plate with a few other people, I just sampled some of it. Based on what I had, I found the breading to be quite light and crispy while the pork meat was slightly sweet, juicy and tender.
Fast forward to over a year later, I decided to revisit Saboten. What spurred this revisit was a coupon I received from shopping at Daison for 10% off at a few Aberdeen Centre food vendors. Saboten was one of the vendors and I was interested in ordering more items to round out this review. However, when I presented the coupon. the staff member had a very off-putting attitude. She said, “It’s expired” in a rather annoying and dismissive manner. I would have liked it better if she put it more politely like, “Sorry, the promotion ended a few weeks ago etc.” It wasn’t like I was going save a significant amount of money. But because of the poor customer service, I decided to not pursue getting food from Saboten nor do I have any interest in returning.
Overall Impression of Saboten
The food I sampled from Saboten was just above average, but the customer service I received on my revisit attempt was very disappointing. I personally would not go back. Rating: 2.5/5
Website: www.saboten.ca
Nosh and Nibble
Sunday 4th of December 2016
You'd think for such a small discount they'd be more generous in helping you find the expiry date rather than an abrupt end to what could have been a good experience.