Recreating Saizeriya's "Tender Chicken with Cheese" at Home: A Tomato Juice Sauce and Homemade Garum Sauce

The main ingredients are just three: chicken thigh, cheese, and tomato juice. The restaurant version comes with corn and potato sides, but Ryuji thinks "honestly, you don't need them," so this time the focus is solely on how to make the chicken.

The one thing Ryuji wavered on was the garum sauce. At Saizeriya, a brown sauce is served next to the sizzling plate for this dish, with a slightly soy sauce–like, Japanese-leaning flavor. Ryuji explains that garum is originally a fish sauce, and positions it as something you can use or skip. Still, since this is a recreation, Ryuji decides to make it, telling the staff it's easy.

In Ryuji's view, Saizeriya's chicken is probably not domestic and is a thin cut. Normally Ryuji would cook chicken thigh as is, but this time, prioritizing the recreation, they cut into the thick parts to open the meat up and spread it out thin overall. You can trim off the fatty parts, and restaurants often do, but Ryuji left them on because the skin is delicious.

Ryuji also recommends pounding the meat if possible. Pounding makes it as thin and tender as Saizeriya's, but if you can't, you don't have to.

For seasoning, use a pinch of salt on each side, roughly 0.7%. The reason is that the sauce is strongly flavored, so a light hand is fine. Salt the meat ahead of time.

Garum sauce is originally made with fish sauce, but on the assumption that most homes don't have fish sauce, Ryuji makes it with ingredients you're likely to have on hand. When a staff member asks whether they'll use nam pla, Ryuji replies that you could, but garum and nam pla are a little different, since garum is an Italian fish sauce.

The quantities are 10 g butter, 1/2 teaspoon consommé, 1 teaspoon soy sauce, and 1 tablespoon water. Reduce this a little. Ryuji prefaces it by saying, "If you ask whether this is correct, I think everyone will have their own opinion," then says they like this sauce and used the same one in the Diavola-Style Chicken episode. The key is adding the toasty aroma of cooked soy sauce, and the staff remarked on how good it smelled. It's purely an optional flavor change, and the dish works without it.

After lightly rinsing the pan used for the garum sauce, Ryuji moves on to the tomato sauce. The base is not canned tomatoes but 200 cc of tomato juice. Canned tomatoes are fine too, but Ryuji explains that tomato juice makes it taste more like the sauce on Saizeriya's chicken. A large plastic bottle of tomato juice works fine as well.

Add a pinch of salt, 1/2 teaspoon chicken bouillon powder (for umami), 1/2 teaspoon sugar (for sweetness), a little pepper, and about 5 g grated garlic, then reduce.

What Ryuji emphasized most is not adding the olive oil at the start. If the oil is in from the beginning, it splatters badly while reducing, so reduce everything except the oil first and mix in the olive oil at the end. When about 2 teaspoons went in at the finish, it actually crackled and spattered, and Ryuji explained, "If this were flying everywhere from the start, your kitchen would get filthy, right?" Ryuji added that not many people make it this way. Regular olive oil is fine.

The sugar stands in for onion. Onion is often added to tomato sauce for sweetness, but cutting onions is a hassle, so this time sugar provides the sweetness. As a guide for how far to reduce it, you should be able to draw a line across the bottom of the pan. The staff also noted, "It's gotten pretty thick."

Ryuji repeatedly stressed how versatile this tomato sauce is. It's a simple sauce you can pour over pork sauté or use as a base for braised meat, and Ryuji hopes viewers will at least remember how to make it.

Lightly coat a frying pan with olive oil and, before it's fully heated, lay the pounded, widely spread chicken in skin side down. It's spread out across the pan at first, but it shrinks as it heats through.

In the previous video Ryuji cooked the chicken with a weight on top, but not this time. Ryuji explained the reason: there's a steam-cooking step later, and that's where it cooks through. The heat stays at medium from start to finish, pressing down lightly with chopsticks now and then. The skin got crispy, though part of it burned a little.

As for ingredient costs, Ryuji says this chicken was about 400 yen at a nearby supermarket. Saizeriya's Tender Chicken is probably less than half of this piece, so Ryuji estimates you could make it for about the same price.

Once the skin is crispy, flip it, cook briefly, then cover with a lid and cook for about 3 minutes. The restaurant uses an oven, but this time it's made without one. Anticipating the objection that it's a waste to cover it after crisping the skin, Ryuji explained that since it'll be topped with tomato sauce and cheese and cooked anyway, not much crispness will remain, but crisping the skin adds a toasty flavor. Checking after 3 minutes, there were still raw spots, so it cooked for about 1 more minute. At this stage it only needs to be about 80% cooked; the rest cooks through while the cheese melts.

Generously spread the tomato sauce over the roughly 80%-cooked chicken. It's fine if some drips down, since it'll get heated too. Pile plenty of cheese on top. Saizeriya uses a set amount, but Ryuji says that since this is a homemade recreation, you can use more. Turn the heat to medium-low, cover, and let the steam melt the cheese while the chicken cooks completely through.

If you have a kitchen torch, browning the surface gives it an oven-baked look closer to the restaurant's. Even without one, just melting the cheese is delicious enough. Baking it in the oven also works.

For plating, Ryuji served the garum sauce on the side and added corn for a Saizeriya-style finish. There was also a suggestion that if you're portioning it out at home and cutting with a knife is difficult, cutting it into bite-sized pieces with kitchen scissors makes it easy even for kids to eat.

After taking a bite, Ryuji laughed and blurted out, "This is dangerous," saying there's no way cheese, tomato sauce, and chicken could be anything but delicious. At the same time, Ryuji also noted that the appeal of Saizeriya is that the food comes out quickly, acknowledging that the carefully made home version takes more effort.

On the sauce, Ryuji explained that canned tomatoes make it too "tomato-y," but reducing tomato juice gives a result like a sauce that's been strained and reduced. It's also good for making ahead.

Next, Ryuji tried it with a little garum sauce. One staff member said they might prefer it with the sauce. Ryuji described the fun of it: the dish is tomato-baked chicken, but with garum sauce it becomes a chicken steak. The way the soy sauce, consommé, and butter sauce goes surprisingly well with the tomato sauce is what makes Saizeriya amazing, Ryuji said. Another staff member also rated it "better with the sauce," and someone even asked, "Is Saizeriya really this good?"

Ryuji said that since garum sauce is a soy sauce/fish sauce–type sauce, rice is the natural pairing, and the staff agreed they'd want to eat it with rice. Finally, Ryuji reflected, "I'm really glad I made the garum sauce" and "It's better with it."

To wrap up, Ryuji said that people who always ordered the Tender Chicken with Cheese can now recreate it at home, while expressing the hope that it will return to the grand menu.

After the main segment, the conversation turned to how everyone spends their time at Saizeriya. Ryuji says they used to order a magnum (about a liter of wine) and drink it the whole time. It was at the location in front of Nakayama Racecourse, and back then you could drink it for a little over 1,000 yen; the staff replied that it's probably still about that much. Ryuji's usual routine was to start with Lambrusco, a sparkling wine, and prosciutto, then switch to a magnum and keep drinking, which since their younger days came to only about 3,000 yen per person. It also came up that the Tender Chicken costs about 550 yen.

Milan-Style Doria is the signature dish, but Ryuji jokingly says they never order it. Ryuji's favorite is the mushroom pizza, which disappeared once but seems to be back now. One staff member loves the green peas, and the conversation got lively over how even people who hate green peas can eat those. Another staff member lamented that a favorite dish made with paprika sauce can't be found anymore.

Ryuji always orders the Small Shrimp Cocktail Salad, usually gets the Diavola-Style Chicken as a main, and lately also orders the lamb dish. Ryuji is from Chiba and says they've been going since around when the first Saizeriya opened, recalling that the first location wasn't as cheap as it is now at first and switched to low prices partway through. Ryuji and the staff alike marveled that it still offers such a varied menu at those prices. Finally, the menu item Ryuji named as their all-time favorite was the escargot, saying it's never as good when eaten anywhere else and that it alone can keep the wine flowing, and with that the video ends.