The Ponzu That Works Across the Whole Menu

Standard ponzu lives on the Japanese section of the menu. Lycopins Tomato Yuzu Ponzu lives everywhere else as well. The difference is the base: instead of rice vinegar, this is built on homemade tomato vinegar (自家製トマト酢使用) — rounder, naturally sweet, and with enough body to carry across sashimi, crudo, salads, grilled meats, and vegetable dishes without feeling out of place on any of them. It is the only tomato ponzu available in the UK trade.

Lycopins — リコピンズ

The brand name Lycopins (リコピンズ) takes its reference from lycopene — the antioxidant compound that gives tomatoes their red colour and is released more readily when tomatoes are cooked or fermented. Ponzu (ポン酢) is itself a loanword, from the Dutch pons meaning citrus punch, which arrived in Japan through seventeenth-century trade. The Lycopins version takes that classical citrus-soy-dashi structure and replaces the rice vinegar base with house-made tomato vinegar, using Ehime tomatoes and Kōchi yuzu — two of the most respected regional produce sources in Japan. Ehime is one of Japan's leading citrus-growing prefectures; Kōchi yuzu is the benchmark variety, known for intense fragrance rather than volume. The result is a sauce that sits at the intersection of Japanese and European cooking traditions without belonging entirely to either.

What does tomato ponzu taste like?

The first note is yuzu — bright, aromatic, the same sharp fragrance you'd expect from a good ponzu. Then the tomato vinegar base comes through: a rounder, warmer acidity than rice vinegar, with natural sweetness underneath. Where standard ponzu can be quite thin and sharp, the tomato element gives this version more body and a slightly fuller mouthfeel. It finishes with clean soy umami from the katsuobushi dashi. The overall effect is a ponzu that is less austere and more approachable — which is why it works across cuisine styles that traditional ponzu does not.

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