Eggplant and ripe tomato curry

Full of delicious veggies!

Spice: 1 out of 10

Rating: 9 out of 10

Today I thought I would tell you about the greatest vegetarian curry I've ever had - Eggplant and ripe tomato curry. To be fair - most curry has meat in it so I can't say that I've eaten a ton of vegetarian curry.  However, this curry can go up against any protein-filled curry any day.

If you don't like eggplant, you probably won't like this curry.  This is yet another curry sent from Japan and I picked it based on the picture. I love eggplant but had never had it in curry before so I was intrigued.

As soon as I opened the pouch I knew it was a good choice.  A great aroma filled the air immediately and as you've read here before, this usually means a tasty curry!!  It came as no surprise that not only did it smell really nice, but it tasted just as good, if not slightly better.

This curry isn't spicy at all. It was just about the mildest curry you can get without it turning into water.  Even though I'm a fan of relatively spicy curry I didn't mind that this one was as mild as it gets.  It's very creamy and sweet which doesn't lend itself to a lot of spiciness.

It seems to me that whenever a curry is creamy it is also sweet.  Perhaps there is a spicy and creamy curry out there, but I can't think of one off the top of my head. Maybe it's been done and wasn't a good combination.  All I know is that sweet and creamy makes for a wonderful combination in a Japanese curry.

The vegetables were all cooked really well.  They practically melt in your mouth and I don't mean just the eggplant.  Even the potato almost melts in your mouth!  Creamy curry with vegetables that almost melt is like a spoonful of heaven. 

This is without a doubt the best vegetarian curry I've had so far.

Kitano Selection's Premium Curry

You can tell it's premium because of the shiny box

Spice: 2
Rating: 8.5

This is your standard curry pouch that you buy in the store (in Japan) and heat up in boiling water for a few minutes.  Thanks to my awesome family in Japan I'm actually able to get ahold of many of these curries which you cannot buy in the States.

This is another instance of choosing a curry based solely on the box. This time I could only read "Kitano Selection" on the box, but I was able to find out that this is called 'Premium Curry' thanks to my personal translator (wife). I don't know what makes this premium other than it being in a fancy looking box - which was the reason I ate it. I was in the mood for something a little more 'upscale'. ^_~

When I open the pouch I always try and smell the curry before I pour it over rice. Sometimes the smell is very obvious - but that seems to happen  most often with the spicier curry. If I can't immediately smell it I lean in. This curry happened to smell absolutely GREAT.  I knew it was going to be good right away - and I was right.  I poured it over rice and thought that it also looked really tasty.  It has a dark color similar to a 'black curry' I ate in Tokyo.  I believe that curry was called "classic curry" or something along those lines and the waiter told us that this is the way curry was made in Japan before the 1950's.  The black color comes from squid ink if I remember correctly, and this also adds a rich flavor.

Perhaps this premium curry contains squid ink?  I don't know because I can't read the label.  I also don't know for sure, but I believe the meat in this curry is beef.   What I do know is that this curry is delicious and is creamy in the best way and has a very deep rich flavor.

It's not spicy at all and tastes very rich and creamy.  It feels 'heavy' and filled me up very well. The portion size was perfect - any more and I would have been stuffed.  I would eat any quantity of this curry that was given to me because it tastes so good, so I'm glad it wasn't so large that I finished eating and felt stuffed afterwards.

If you're looking for a nice thick, creamy, and satisfying curry dinner I highly recommend you give Kitano Selection's Premium Curry a try.  It's a classic flavor that will not disappoint and will leave you feeling satisfied and content. 

Tatsuya Kawagoe Curry

Restaurant Website (In Japanese - I don't see an English version)

Spice:  2 out of 10
Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Here is another instance of picking a curry simply by the box.  I could tell that this curry was from a restaurant as the map of its location is on the back of the box. I also assumed the man on the front is the chef/owner of said restaurant.  The only roman characters on the box said "Tatsuya Kawagoe" which I decided was either the name of the restaurant, the chef's name, or the name of the brand.

I liked that they put a happy stick figure on the box and decided the reason you see the chef's watch in the picture is because it's always CURRY TIME!!  This is how I decided to try Tatsuya Kawagoe curry one night knowing nothing about what ingredients or flavors to expect. I decided it would be more fun to taste it 'blind' and see if what I think of it matches up with reality afterwards.

Doesn't look great, but tastes awesome!

When I first poured this curry out of it's pouch I thought that it didn't look very nice, but that it smelled amazing. The smell was good enough to offset the poor presentation, especially because I don't really expect the visual presentation of a pre-made curry to be phenomenal.  I leaned in for a closer smell - it has a sort of sweet tomato smell to it.

Then I sat down to eat and was pleased to find that it tasted more like it smelled than how it looked! The pieces of potato and carrots that were in it were nice and big which I always appreciate. The potatoes were soft like butter but not overdone to the point where they just turn into mush with your spoon.  I don't notice any meat in this curry but I don't care because it tastes great.

This curry is very sweet but I do notice some spice in it. However, it's not obvious that it's in there and I only noticed it because I was looking (tasting?) for it. It's there and it's the balance that pulls this curry together, but it is subtle and I doubt I would have noticed it if I hadn't really been paying attention. 

Even though it's working it doesn't quite taste like a Japanese curry.  As I give it some thought I think it must have some basil or oregano in it. This curry, I decided, has a distinct Italian flavor to it and it tastes like a mix between Japanese curry and an Italian risotto.  I would have given this an 8 out of 10, but I decided to take half a point away simply because it tasted as much like a risotto as it did a curry.  It's not a bad thing, but it's not a distinct "I want curry!!" flavor.

I loved the design of the box so I decided to make my own!

After writing the words above it was time to look into this curry/chef.  It turns out that Tatsuya Kawagoe is both the name of the chef and his restaurant. He's a Celebrity chef in Japan and the cuisine that he's known for is... Italian!  I guess my tastebuds actually do know a few things! That explains why this tastes like a mix between Japanese and Italian cuisines and had I known that before eating it I might have made a side of garlic bread :p  Gotta love the fusion curry.

Nagoya Cochin Curry

Thank you Nagoya!

Spice:  6 out of 10 
Rating: 9.5 out of 10


Today's curry is served with a side of history. As you can see by the rating I loved this curry, but first let's get to our brief history lesson. One great thing about food is that you can learn a lot about the culture and history of the society where it originated when you eat. This is why you can goto a Japanese, Italian, Greek, Mexican, Thai, etc restaurant and you'll find vastly different food.  There is a lot of culture behind Japanese food and it all ties in with the rest of Japanese society - however, the only things I'm ever going to get into on this blog are about Japanese culture and/or history as it relates to Japanese Curry. 


This curry is thanks to the delicious Nagoya Cochin Chicken. I had never heard of this breed of chicken before - actually I can't name any other breed of chicken. I'm not an expert on chicken breeds, I just eat them! It's only because my wife told me that this curry was made from a special kind of chicken that I ever found out about it.  


This is where not being able to really read Japanese and choosing a curry based purely on the box gets interesting.  Anyway, I was intrigued about this 'special chicken' after I'd eaten the curry and decided it was time to visit my good friend Google. This is how I learned that Nagoya is known for their heirloom breed of chicken known as the Nagoya Cochin. 

I taste wonderful!

The Nagoya Cochin chicken is apparently a famous breed of chicken according to the internet.  In fact, Nagoya is known for it's dishes made from this breed of chicken.  There are entire restaurants in Nagoya devoted solely to different dishes cooked from the Nagoya Cochin. Normally you can't eat raw poultry, but you can apparently eat Nagoya Cochin sashimi!  This breed originally came into existence during the Meiji era by crossing a local Nagoya breed with a Chinese breed of chickens called the Cochin Buff. These chickens became popular because they laid a large number of eggs and their meat was especially tasty (I can attest to this). 

When other breeds that grew much faster were brought to Japan after World War II there was a potential crisis that could have wiped out the breed. Instead, these prized chickens were saved (THANK YOU) by the Poultry Institute of the Aichi Agricultural Research Center which raised awareness of the high quality flavor and low fat content of the meat compared to the more mass-produced breeds which I assume came from the United States. 

This breed is also different from mass-bred chickens in that they take about 2.5 times longer to mature than other chicken breeds.  In line with Kobe beef these chickens are allowed to roam freely and are not kept in cages. I personally think this has a lot to do with how good they taste - I believe ANY breed of any animal will taste better if they are allowed to live as they were meant to rather than be force-fed in a tiny cage until they are slaughtered.  In addition they weigh less than other chickens and so the meat costs about 4 times more than other chicken meat.  I will happily pay 4 times as much for some of this chicken when I'm in Japan! Not on a day-to-day basis, but every now and then I'd say splurge on the Nagoya Cochin!! ^_^  

I need to goto Nagoya next time I visit Japan so that I can try this meat fresh, because in a prepared package of curry which has a bunch of preservatives in it it was still AMAZING.  Enough learning, let's get to the curry!

♡o｡.(✿ฺ｡ ✿ฺ)

When I first opened the package of curry I was greeted by the most the most wonderful smell. If heaven exists it might smell a little bit like this. It's the best smelling curry I've ever had that was not cooked fresh at home or in a restaurant. In fact, it smelled better than a lot of curry I've had in restaurants. 


The curry itself tasted great.  It was creamy, had a nice medium level of spice, and had a hint of a rustic - almost smokey flavor to it. Not the kind of smokey that over powers the food and makes you feel like you're eating next to a campfire. It was subtle, and it was that extra bit of flavor that drove this over the edge into the realm of not just great curry, but GREAT CURRY. 


The balance between spice and smokey rustic flavors was perfect. It was balanced better than most peoples' check books!  Then there was the creamy aspect.  I've never had curry that I would describe as 'creamy' before.  I want more, there has to be others.  It tasted like a tomato based cream. Not quite to the extreme as an alfredo sauce, but to the level that a Japanese dish would borrow the "creaminess" from an Italian dish and make something wholly Japanese. The ability to take something from one culture and then change into something more in line with Japanese culture and pass it off as their own is one thing that I love about Japan, but that's a whole other topic.  Another thing I love about Japan is that you can buy Nagoya Cochin Curry in a supermarket! 


This curry is just about perfect for a store bought curry. There is nothing wrong with it except that it wasn't in a package 10 times larger.  If you're in Japan stop reading this blog and go get yourself some of this curry!

I was very sad to see this
｡゜(｀Д´)゜｡

Second Chance: Kuroge wagyu (Japanese black beef) chokotto beef curry from Sanda-ya Souhonke

This time with the correct amount of properly cooked rice!

Category: Store Bought (From Japan)

Flavor:  6 out of 10

Spice: 1 out of 10

The other night I got home from work kind of late and I wasn't very hungry. I did want to have a little something for dinner though, and I didn't feel like cooking.  There were not many choices and so I realized it was the perfect time to give the chokotto curry a second chance!  I had a little bit of rice made (properly this time) from the other day so I heated it up, put the curry into some boiling water, and 5 minutes later I was tasting kuroge wagyu (Japanese black beef) chokotto beef curry for the second time - but trying to keep an open mind as if it was my first time. 

My initial reaction was "Mmmmm, this is quite nice". A very different reaction, but this time I was eating this curry under the proper conditions.  I wasn't very hungry and only wanted a small portion and this time it turned out it was the perfect amount.  

There still wasn't a lot of beef, but it seemed like a little more. Rather, the beef was cut into smaller pieces, so while it may have been the same amount I felt less cheated. I would have liked more meat and more vegetables, but it wasn't such a big deal since I wasn't very hungry.  This time everything just seemed acceptable.  It still had absolutely no spice to it but the flavor was nice.  

I think this is great for when you want a small meal, don't want to put any effort into it, and don't really care for something really delicious.  Last time I used a scale of 1-5, but I've been using 1-10 in later reviews so this time it gets a 6 out of 10.  An upgrade from the previous review, but still not among the kings of curry.

Kuroge wagyu (Japanese black beef) chokotto beef curry from Sanda-ya Souhonke

Category: Store Bought (From Japan)

Flavor:  2.5 out of 5

Spice: 1 out of 10 

***  I need to make a note before this review.  I'm out-of-town for work right now and I don't have a rice cooker with me. What I do have is a small plastic thing which allows you to make rice in a microwave. This was the first time I used it and I didn't use enough water so the rice was undercooked which definitely made a negative impression with this curry.  I'll be reviewing this curry another time to give it a chance at a better rating since terrible rice is a big deal ***

This is what I will be making rice with for the next 4 months.

The name of this curry means "a small portion of beef curry".  Chokotto is right, but they should have named it Chokotto-oishii because that's what it is.  It wasn't bad, but at the same time it wasn't good.  It was just a very small portion of curry with no distinct flavor or anything to set it apart from other currys. 

When they say the portion is small that is an understatement. For Japan - maybe it's a small portion, but for the United States this is almost a small portion and I should have made both of the packets.  I usually consider American portions to be too big and feel that Japanese-sized portions are the right size most of the time. So when I think a portion is too small it's definitely small. Unless you're not very hungry or you're on a very strict diet this really isn't enough to satisfy you. 

Along with the small size there was literally one piece of beef in the entire thing.  One piece!  That's it?  I guess you have to put at least one piece in there to call it beef curry but come on Sanda-ya Souhonke, you can do better than that.  To add to the disappointment of the single piece of beef, there wasn't much flavor. There was no more spice to this curry than to a cup of water.  I've had mild curry before that was spicy compared to this. 

Now, I happen to enjoy fairly spicy curry so I at least like a little spice even when it's mild. To me a total lack of any spice means it's essentially bland and just made to not be offensive to anyone.  When you make any product, curry included, so that it's for "everyone" you end up with a product that's actually not for anyone. Yes, it was a little sweet, but even that flavor wasn't strong enough for this curry to have any real flavor to it. Be bold and put some flavor - any flavor- in your curry!  Maybe I won't like it but at least I can't blame you for not even trying. 

Overall, this curry was not very satisfying.  It didn't fill me up, it wasn't delicious, and all it did was make me feel a bit disappointed. On the other hand it wasn't actually bad. The best part is that I didn't feel so bad about messing up the rice, because I wasn't wasting good curry on it. 

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.