My Favorite Curries

When it's time to eat curry there are essentially three categories of curry to consider.  Homemade, store bought that you heat up at home, and curries prepared at a restaurant. I don't think it's really fair to compare curries from one category to another because they're different and each one can be amazing. There are benefits to each category and I happen to have favorites for each one as well. Perhaps one day I'll try a curry that becomes a new favorite or I'll figure out the secret to making one curry to rule them all! But for now here are the best:


Homemade


Favorite: My mother-in-law's beef curry.
Why it's my favorite:  While I haven't eaten curry in every Japanese household, my mother-in-law's curry is definitely better than any curry my wife and I have made at home. The flavor is so rich and there is a perfect balance between sweet and salty. Everything is cooked to perfection and the beef is so tender you'd think it was tenderized before it was cooked (but it wasn't). It is the most umami curry I've had.
          I've helped make it and that is when I learned that the best curries are a combination of different brands of curry mixed together. I don't know which ones are used or what the ratio is to the family recipe, but even if I did I wouldn't give the entire thing away. I'll have to fully learn the recipe next time we visit Kanazawa.
          It might be the best curry I've ever eaten but I will never make a claim like that without conducting a blind taste test with all of my favorite curries at the same time.
Pros: Obviously when you are making curry from scratch at home you know your ingredients will be fresh. You also can make it with whatever vegetables and meat you want. Plus, you control the portion size, if you want to make a lot and eat it for days you can. If you want to make a lot and freeze some for later you can do that as well.  Curry also tastes best the day after it was made. So if you cook it at home you can leave it on the stove overnight and reheat it the next day for a mouth full of oishiiness!
Cons: You have to spend time buying the ingredients and cooking the curry. This can be a lot of fun, but sometimes you're too tired to enjoy cutting vegetables or waiting for curry to cook. Sometimes all you want to do is make some rice and eat which is where the next category comes into play.




Store bought

Favorite: Noto Beef Curry.
Why it's my favorite: It actually tastes like it was freshly prepared even though all you had to do was heat it up in boiling water for 3-5 minutes. The beef tastes really good and the flavor of the curry itself is sweet and tangy. I'd be happy to get curry this good in a restaurant and I've had worse curry in a restaurant in Japan, so for pre-made food that's pretty amazing.
Pros:  All you have to do is place the pouch in boiling water for 3-5 minutes and then pour over rice. It also tastes great.
Cons:  You can only buy this in Japan so if you live in the United States (or anywhere else) like I do, you're out of luck. The ingredients are not as fresh as homemade or restaurant curry and it contains a bunch of preservatives. For store bought curry this is one of the most expensive - I think it's worth the price to have every now and then but it's a little expensive to be an every day item. Sometimes I forget to make boiled eggs ahead of time and I'd rather eat than wait for eggs to boil and then cool down. Curry is always better with a boiled egg on top.



Restaurant

For restaurants I have a tie. I'll write about each one separately below. 

Favorite:  Hurry Curry of Tokyo, West Los Angeles, CA

Why it's my favorite: It might be bias because this is where I first discovered that Japanese curry existed.  I had just moved to Los Angeles and a friend conveniently lived across the street and took me here. Previously I had only had Thai and Indian curry, but Japanese curry is something even greater! 

          Even though it was first, I've now had a lot of curry and this is still a place that I crave to go. Until I went to Japan it was my number 1 with no competition. The curry itself is so full of flavor and I could eat their chicken katsu curry at least once a week and never get tired of it. 

Pros:  It's pretty fast, the staff are always great, and it has a really nice atmosphere. All in all it's a nice experience going here and you're guaranteed amazing curry every time.  It also comes with a really tasty salad - it's one of my favorite salad dressings ever! If you don't feel like curry they also have a selection of Japanese spaghetti's (I know, weird right?) which are delicious as well. 

          If you live in Jakarta, Indonesia there's a location there as well. 

Cons:  It's not very close to my home and the way traffic is in Los Angeles I don't get to go there very often. Trying to get to the westside of Los Angeles during rush hour is worse than a paper cut. The location being so close to the 405 seems convenient, but it actually makes it a pain in the ass to get to from the eastside. 

          There used to be a Pasadena location which was much more convenient but sadly it closed almost 2 years ago when the building was sold and the new owner severely raised the rent. I still mourn the loss of that location and I refuse to ever patronize the restaurant that took it's place. 

Favorite:  CoCo Ichibanya, Osaka, Japan (although there are many locations with a new one in Torrance, CA that I need to go to)

Why it's my favorite: As with all of my favorites it comes down to taste.  CoCo is full of flavor, plus they have a very large range of spicyness. You can go from no heat to burn your tongue off and sweat like you're sitting in a sauna.  

Pros: It's a fairly large chain so there's a decent chance that you can get to one of their locations. It tastes amazing and is pretty quick. One day I need to put CoCo against Hurry Curry in a taste test because it might just be as good. You can customize your curry here which is awesome and something that I haven't seen anywhere else - at least to this extent.  You get to choose your level of spice, if you want extra rice, plus a whole slew of extra toppings for a small fee. The customization is almost as good as if you were cooking at home, except you don't have to do any work! 

Cons: It's a chain and the idea is that it's sort of a fast-food comfort place.  The decor is boring and only a slight improvement from a place like Denny's. The idea is that you go here for a quick and delicious meal, which is great, but the surroundings leave something to be desired.  The staff does their job properly, but you can tell that they work for a large company.

          As far as the Osaka location it takes 12 hours in a plane to get to Japan, plus all the time involved dealing with LAX. There is a Torrance, CA location now which is only about 40 minutes away but I haven't been there yet so I don't know if it lives up to Japan standards.