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.

Light and Healthy Mirai - Albuquerque, NM

Facebook: Light and Healthy Mirai
This restaurant does not have a website, but they do have a facebook page.

This is a terrible excuse for curry

Spice:  4 out of 10
Overall:  2 out of 10


It was a late night at work which means we get dinner on the company.  We usually get it from local restaurants since there are not always enough people to justify full blown catering.  On one such night we ordered from "Light and Healthy Mirai" which I think is a weird name for a restaurant.  Name aside, I've mentioned before that all of the Asian cuisine in Albuquerque, NM leaves much to be desired. I've eaten from this place before, but I usually try to get dishes that are hard to mess up like karaage, or teriyaki.

I had a feeling the curry from here was not going to be great, possibly not very good, but since I wasn't paying for it I decided to take a gamble.  I ordered the chicken curry and was immediately disappointed when I opened the styrofoam container pictured you see above. Maybe I should have ordered the katsu curry - at least it would be fried which makes everything taste better.

The presentation was horrible, but I'll let that slide since it's take-out. There was a disturbing lack of smell. I always make fun of CoCo Ichibanya because of their slogan "Good smell, good curry" but it's true! All of the best curries smell great which gets you excited before you even start to eat.

I don't know if it shows in the picture but this curry was so thin.  I mixed it with the rice and instead of a nice coating, it sort of just rolled off the rice and down to the bottom of the container.  This was more like a stew with rice mixed in than curry on top of rice.  At this point I had no hope of a delicious curry dinner - oh well.

Once I tried it I confirmed everything I thought. This was terrible. I didn't even finish it because it just wasn't good enough to satisfy me. I had about half and tossed the rest out.   It was bland, watery, and lacked almost any vegetables except for a small amount of carrots and potatoes which were overcooked. The only thing that prevented this from a rating of 1 was that nothing in the curry was offensive. It was not gross, but it also was not good.

The best thing about this curry is that I only paid for it with my time.  Again, if you're in Albuquerque, NM and want Japanese Curry - make it yourself!

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´)゜｡