Ahhhhh....coco ichi. CocoIchi Curry House, to be exact. This is my number #2 favorite restaurant in Japan. The motto is “good smell, good curry”. What more do you need to know? I could stop the review right now.
But I won't. And I shan't. Willn't. I would consider it a shame to deny you, my semi-captive reader, the pleasure of my poorly conjured description. In fact, CocoIchi is so good, I went through all the trouble of powering up my computer, and putting on my fingerless gloves to type this for you. Yes, it is cold enough to see my breath in my apartment, so I must type with hand protection. Dont get me started on heaters, I have one below my desk and one above my desk kickin' out the jams to no avail. My simple bamboo hut cannot retain the heat.
Honestly though, if I had a plate of CocoIchi curry in front of me, I would be as warm as a newly born star. The heat that is radiated from a single plate of this magnificent brown goop is equivalent to that of a Fukushima/Tucson summer mash up. Which is exactly which temperature I prefer my food. But enough about cities with hellish/borderline tortuous summers, lets get down to brass tacks. Whatever that means.
CocoIchi has a winning formula. It is the type of restaurant that caters to most hated of all restaurant goers: the ultra Customizer. You know who you are...you can't order anything without changing it. I want my burger with no onions. I want my burrito with no pico de gallo, sub beans (aka the Benson). I want my masala extra, extra spicy (aka the gangster smack, aka the Mowry masala). Yes that right, even the Mayonnaise guy, your's truly. "Fuck your chef: I want Mayonaise on everything."
Wow, sorry folks, I went a little overboard there. But, such is the passion that arises when one chooses to talk about the ultra customizer. As a humble and inebriated restaurant employee for the better part of my teen years, I came to hate this person. Nothing worse than a special order to throw off my grill/saute/pizza oven chi. Anyway, CocoIchi diffuses this bomb by offering you too many choices. As a recovering customizer, it is a step back into the living hell that is being a picky eater. CocoIchi will make you anything, in any quantity, and then smother it in curry. Whats that you say? You don't speak enough Japanese to read the menu? No problem, sort of, they have a menu with 9 languages on it. Hey, bro, you asked for it. Thought ordering customized curry in Japanese was tough? Wait til you see the Greenlandic Inuit (my personal favorite).
Let's examine these choices: of course, our first order of business is rice. The standard plate comes with 300 grams. That is a lot of rice. You can order anything from 100 grams up to 1000 grams, which comes on a plate bigger than the table. The rice is tasty, fluffy/sticky, and white. (seriously, if you screw up rice in Japan, you will go out of business instantly. We are talking about customization here, not rice!)
You can custom-esize the heat 1-10. 1 being no heat, 10 being so hot that they kill a chef every time you order it. Seriously, have you ever stood over a pot of way too spicy food? Its like pepper spray. Go, try it. I ordered level 10 one time...It was the summer of twenty-ten, and I found myself challenged by an Oregonian that claimed he could out-spicy an Arizonan. We both ordered level 10 and raised our spoons. Needless to say, it was tortuously delicious. Although I was beaten in the great curry battle of twenty-ten, I was definitely not as sweaty or pink as my cool-weathered counterpart, and thus I kept my infamous and legendary swagger. And nothing proclaims swagger like ordering curry toppings.
You can order any topping you like. There are hundreds....THOUSANDS. Actually there are about 15, ranging from vegetables, to seafood, to poultry, to the dreaded natto (we shall explore natto, my dreaded enemy, someday soon). These toppings include, Kastu, a fabulous piece of deep fried pork (seriously why are you still reading; get on a plane now...DEEP FRIED PORK), chicken, beef, shrimp, some type of weird fish and my personal, and seasonal, favorite: cabbage katsu. Ground pork (sorry dad), cabbage and other secret ingredients mixed together and deep fried. On rice. Next to curry. Yowza! My cold apartment just got a little warmer just thinking about it.
So, you must be dying to know...what's my custom order? Well, as any CoCoIchi fan knows, the personal order is the true expression of love for the best chain curry restaurant on earth, and, like a guilty pleasure pop artist (Bieber fever) or a sexual perversion (Bieber fever), sometimes it is hard to admit. But, given that the internet is the haven of anonymity, I shall share my CoCo fetish with you. Ready? Dont judge:
300 grams rice
Pork Cabbage Katsu/or Chicken Katsu (depending on season)
Level 4 Spicy
Spinach Topping
Pickles and Ichi sauce to garnish
