Indian curry is famous all over the world but did you know there is Japanese curry as well? Japanese curry is called curry rice in Japan as it is usually served with rice. It is one of the more popular dishes nowadays in Japan due to the easy of making and wide variety of ingredients and tastes that can be used.
Standard ingredients in the curry include carrot, onion, potato and curry powder or curry blocks. Besides the standard ingredients, there is often either meat or seafood put in as well. Or a different variation is to eat the curry rice with a fried meat cutlet. If you are making curry rice yourself, here is a tip: mix different type of curry blocks together to get a unique taste.
As it is not so difficult to make, it is often home-made and one of the first dishes people learn when cooking for the new time. There are many curry specialty restaurants in Japan. The most famous curry chain restaurant in Japan is CoCo Ichiban. The atmosphere in the chain stores is fast food restaurant like, but an authentic restaurant is very cosy. For the authentic places there is usually a waiting line, but there is a high turn-over as the people just come for the food and not stay long after finished eating.
A delicious variation of the curry rice is curry udon. Instead of rice, the curry is served with udon. The curry is more like a soup in the curry udon dish. Ingredients are similar but for the meat, small thin cut portions of beef are usually used. It is best to eat curry udon with a bib because eating the slippery udon with chopsticks can become a mess.
