The Japanese love curry. As such they are very much like the English, who have taken to a non-native food to the extent that it is almost ubiquitous. Nearly all basic restaurants in Japan do a curry: usually a breaded chicken breast with rice and a sauce. There are a few designated Indian restaurants in Japan (I went to one in Tokyo) but there is one constant – Japanese sticky rice.
Nevertheless, there is clearly something that can be described as a Japanese Curry, which an increasing number of British Japanese Restaurants are doing. It is instructive, as it could well be where the British curry would have stalled if not for the large influx of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent slowly expanding our palate. The Japanese Curry reminds me a lot of the curry my mother made me as a child: in as much as the brown gloopy curry sauce is almost identical in flavour to the Homepride curry sauce of the seventies. Said sauce is poured over the chicken breast, with the addition of a few “exotic” vegetables. Of course to the Japanese carrots and potatoes are exotic (as to my Mum chucking apple and raisins was a sign of foreign goodness). Not very hot, but very, very homely.
I had one the other day at Taro on Brewer Street (just down from the Glasshouse Stores). Not only did it manage to be authentically Japanese, it was also remarkably comforting, which I only later attached to my childhood connection to the flavours. To think that when I was in Japan, I turned my nose up at their curries. Now they are a favourite. Sometimes doing something wrong is a whole new way of doing it right.