I cook my own curry sometimes and it's pretty good. But I still enjoy going to CoCoIchi for lunch too. Usually, I get stewed chicken curry, with a level 3, 4, or occasionally 5 spice. Trust me, even 3 is spicy enough for most foreigners, so I recommend starting lower than you think you should, even if you love spicy food.
Every year, the restaurant gives away spoons. I know it doesn't sound special, but I really love curry so having a spoon as a souvenir for whenever I might go back to the US is important to me.
To get the spoon, you have to eat a certain special curry (seen above - it's called grand maze curry and has pork and vegetables), and then you draw a coupon out of a box which could get you a free spoon. If you collect five losing tickets you can enter to win a spoon that way.
How many of these spoons have you acquired over the years? I wonder if the older spoons fetch decent money on eBay.
ReplyDeleteAnyways... aside from a bowl of udon... there's nothing I'd rather have on a cold rainy day than some Japanese curry and rice. My mom would make it several times a month during the winter when I was a kid and kept it simple... chunks of beef, carrots, potatoes, peas, and onions. AMAZING. I might have to take a quick trip down to Vegas and have her cook some up.
I only have the one. This year's promotion supposedly involves 250,000 spoons so they aren't exactly rare, but it's frequently tough to find old things in Japan.
ReplyDeleteBeef curry is good, but I prefer a pork-based curry with chicken (pork-based seems to be the default here). The veggies she uses are pretty standard, so she's probably right on the traditional recipe. It isn't hard to make yourself if you get the curry roux blocks.