Tokyo Munch! YUMMY and UNIQUE Curry

In Japan, curry is home food. It’s food that your ma’ makes just about every week with a variation or two. Pork one night, chicken another – but even with a repetitious formula, curry is arguably, Japan’s soul food. Talk to any Japanese person and listen to the fondness in their voices when they talk about their mother’s curry or their favorite curry joint.

You may be wondering – what does a Taiwanese girl from Canada know about Japanese curry?

Well, I’ve eaten a lot of it. Like, A LOT. 

There was a period in my life when my mom would make Japanese curry at least once a week. If not twice a week! My mom would make mildly spiced curry that had sweet apple-tinged flavors and often times, chicken wings as the meat of choice. While delicious,  at some point, I ungraciously told my mom that I needed a break from curry.

I only started to enjoy eating curry again while living in Japan and got to savor Japan’s feverish love of curry. I’ve since discovered exciting restaurants that are taking curry beyond the household. (Though, there ain’t nothing wrong with home curry!) These places were using curry as vehicle to express a personal culinary perspective.

So in this post, I present to you, some of my favorite curries that brought me out of the depths of curry malaise. (Again, sorry mom!)

These are the unique and delicious curries that I crave and probably think about at least once a day. They are interpretations on Japanese home-style curry and are perfect for those who are looking for an adventurous curry experience!

Rojiura Curry Samurai

Soup Curry

Soup curry is from Sapporo, Hokkaido, the snowy northern most island in Japan. The story goes that in the 1970s, there was an influx of immigrants from various countries like China, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India that brought their cuisine to Sapporo. By combining the national love of curry within this new local cultural climate, soup curry was born.

Soup curry differs from Japanese home-style curry in several ways:

• Consistency! The consistency of soup curry is similar to a light broth while Japanese home-style curry is often like a thick gravy or stew. 
• Plating! The rice and curry are plated separately with soup curry while Japanese home-style curry is often served together on the same plate. 
• Veggie abundance! Hokkaido is well-known for having an agricultural bounty, so most soup curry dishes will have a large assortment of chunky vegetables in the soup. They will most often be cooked in the su-age style which means fried without any additional batter. 
• Customization! When you eat soup curry, you can often customize the soup curry base, spicyness level, amount of rice, and toppings. 

Rojiura Curry Samurai is my choice for soup curry in Tokyo. It’s a Hokkaido-based chain, and the soup curry that they make perfectly encapsulates what you should expect from this dish.

Rojiura serves up a generous portion of  soup curry with the most delicious tasting veggies. You should definitely get the extra vegetable option which includes 20 different kinds of vegetables!

You can also go the extra mile at Rojiura and get the Samurai Matsuri (祭り) special which lets you choose 3 – 4 toppings for your soup curry from a huge 20+ item topping menu! 

Unfortunately, the menu is all in Japanese but if you’re going to get the Matsuri special, I recommend getting the zangi (ざんぎ）chicken as one of your toppings. Zangi is essentially karaage fried chicken, but in Hokkaido, they call it zangi! At Rojiura, the zangi comes out piping hot, ultra crispy and oozing with chicken juices. 

I also recommend getting the deep fried broccoli (揚げブロコリ, age-burocori) as one of your toppings! The tempura battered broccoli is light and brings out the natural nutty aroma of the broccoli. It’s hard to stop eating it once you take a bite!

Shimokitazawa Branch

Where: 3 Chome-31-14 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku, Tōkyō-to 155-0031

When: Open everyday. Lunch (11:30 – 15:30) & Dinner (17:30 – 22:00)

Kichijoji Branch

Where: 2 Chome-2-27-2 Kichijōji Honchō, Musashino-shi, Tōkyō-to 180-0004

When: Open everyday.  Lunch (11:30 – 15:30) & Dinner (17:30 – 22:30)

Cafe Red Book

Indian Curry

While you can find curry anywhere in Japan, cafe Red Book serves up an unabashed menu of Indian-inspired curries. 

It is said that curry was introduced during the Meiji era from British traders and that while the Japanese enjoyed eating curry, they believed it was unsuitable companion to the short-grain rice that was exclusively consumed in Japan. So, in exchange of the pantheon of spices that are present in Indian curry, Japanese curry tends to focus on mild spices with a sweet undertone in the guise of a thick stew.

However, at Cafe Red Book, the curries strive to be flavor-packed expressions of curries that you may find in India. 

Star anise, cardamon, and cinnamon – all of these flavors are present. The flavors instantly transport you out of Japan and into an expression of India that doesn’t try to mold itself to an ideal curry that would pair well with short-grain rice. In fact, the curries are paired with long grain saffron rice and a pappadum which is not commonly seen in curry restaurants in Japan. The combination of spice, crunch and savory tender meat makes any plate of curry that you order at Red Book a winner.  

Portions are fairly large at cafe Red Book and most curries are under 1200 yen at lunch time. At night, cafe Red Book becomes a cozy hideaway bar where you can sip a cocktail and nosh on a plate of curry. Day or night, if you are in the Naka Meguro neighborhood, make Cafe Red Book a destination.

Where: 1 Chome-3-２ Kamimeguro, Meguro-ku, Tōkyō-to 153-0051

When: Closed Sundays and National Holidays. 11:00 – 23:00. Lunch time (11:00 – 14:30). 

Kalpasi

Freestyle Curry

After getting off at a local train station and winding around a residential neighbourhood, you’ll come upon a door half open, a warm light beckoning you to come in. 

You’ve arrived to Kalpasi – a house of freestyle experimental curry with an emphasis on showcasing how the vast spectrum of curry spices plays with local Japanese ingredients. Kalpasi is led by Chef Kurosawa who changes the menu weekly. You will never eat the same meal two times in a row at Kalpasi.

When enter Kalpasi, you will notice bespoke decor, a carefully curated beer and booze section, and if you’re lucky enough, you’ll also have a ring side seat by the kitchen to make you feel like you are in Chef Kurosawa’s playground. He calls his curry, “freestyle curry” as he makes use of locally sourced seasonal ingredients and his repertoire of curry knowledge to make curry meals inspired by thali sets to Southern Indian banana leaf meals.

On the rainy night that I went to Kalpasi, the menu was a freestyle thali set. A thali refers to a compartmental serving tray in which your meal is served. Many cultures utilize forms of a thali, but it is most commonly found in India wherein various small dishes are plated together on a thali. Salty, sweet, spicy, bitter and astringent flavors are all present in a thali plate as the goal is to balance all those flavors in one meal.

Before reaching Chef Kurosawa’s expression of a thali, you must order at least one drink at Kalpasi. I ordered the lassi of the day which was a cassis-flavored lassi. It was smooth and tangy, a nice warm up for my taste buds.

An appetizer of a bhendi okra came swiftly after my drink. Astringent and unwaveringly savory, I couldn’t help but inhale it as fast as I could.

The seat in which you sit in, is assigned to you. So you when you arrive to the restaurant, the restaurant staff with guide you towards your seat. If you are lucky enough, you might get a ring-side seat and watch Chef Kurosawa do his magic. 

The thali set cometh! The main course arrived and it was a symphony of flavors. The curries that Chef Kurosawa dreamed up for tonight’s thali was a mutton curry which had inexplicably tender mutton, a seasonal vegetable curry,  daal, watercress leaves with a quail egg, pickles and a heaping portion of Jasmine/Basmati rice mix. The star of the show was a sanma (mackarel) curry stewed in umeboshi which made me pause to enjoy the flavors.

Sanma and umeboshi are typical Japanese ingredients that one might find at a meal in Japan, especially for breakfast. The stewed flavors of sanma with a hint of clove in the umeboshi sauce was a true expression of what Chef Kurosawa tries to do at Kalpasi. He uses the ingredients and flavors that are native to Japan and inverts them into a delicious and novel dish that boasts curry, not as a dish, but as an expression of self.

Kalpasi is a dinner-only restaurant with two seatings a night. You must make a reservation one week in advance by the messaging app, LINE, if you want to taste Chef Kurosawa’s weekly offerings.

Kalpasi opens up their reservations for the week on Sunday at 10pm before the week begins. So, if you wanted to eat at Kalpasi on Saturday, September 21st, you can make a reservation from 10pm on Sunday, September 16th. 

There are only two dinner seatings per day. The first seating is from 6:30pm to 8pm and the second seating is from 8:30pm – 10pm. Pick whichever suits your schedule the best, but the reservation system is based on a first come first served basis, so get your message in quickly if you want to secure a spot.

It may be possible to send a message in English to secure a reservation. If you feel more comfortable to send a message in Japanese, feel free to use this template:

こんにちは。私の名前は(insert your name)です。

9月28日の18:30で1人の予約したいです。

電話番後は(insert your phone number)。

メールは(insert your e-mail address)。

よろしくお願いいたします。

9月28日: Replace 9/28 with the dates that you want to make a reservation for. 月 being the character for month and 日the character for day. 

1人: replace 1 with however many people are in your party. 

I am still just learning Japanese, so the message may not be perfect. However, I was able to secure a reservation with that message! If any Japanese readers come across my blog and want to correct my message, I would really appreciate it! 

Where: 4 Chome-3-10 Kyōdō, Setagaya-ku, Tōkyō-to 156-0052

When: Two dinner seatings nightly. By reservation only using LINE @kalpasi