If you sit at the counter at Torizen, a Japanese restaurant in Schaumburg that serves quick lunches during the day and izakaya dishes at night, you get quite the show. Amid the burners, ovens, and prep tables lies a tonkatsu station, where cooks bread and fry both chicken and Berkshire pork cutlets to order. They pass them through pans of egg wash and nubbly panko breadcrumbs and then drop them in hot oil. The katsu emerge golden brown and so impossibly crispy-crunchy that they loudly crackle when the cooks cut them into chopstick-friendly slices and lay them against a mound of cool shredded cabbage. The pork (my fave) is super juicy, a little springy (the way Japanese people like it), and fantastic in its set with miso soup, rice, and potato salad. Don’t pass up the little bit of breaded fat at the end of each slice: That’s part of the yum. $21 lunch; $25 dinner. 22 E. Golf Rd., Schaumburg