Curry House CoCo Ichibanya (referred to as ‘CoCo Ichi’ hereafter) is Japan’s premier Japanese-style curry restaurant chain, with over 1000 shops in Japan and nearly 50 overseas.

One of the secrets to CoCo Ichi’s success is variety: customers can choose the spiciness of the curry, the amount of rice and one or more toppings from a spectrum of delicious ingredients.

Of course, for the indecisive, such variety can make something as simple as ordering a plate of curry a stressful endeavor.

That’s why we recently dispatched our leading culinary research team to test a plate of CoCo Ichi curry with everything on it. After all, if you can’t decide on one flavor, why not try them all?

Check the report below!

According to the staff, we weren’t the first customers to order curry with a side of everything. Apparently, there are some customers that come in and order the works whenever a new topping debuts on the menu.

After seeing what ‘the works’ actually looks like, it’s difficult to think of a more self-destructive hobby.

To see what we mean, take a look at the breakdown of our order:

・Pork curry

・Rice (600g)

・Toppings: fried oyster, hire-katsu (breaded, deep-fried pork fillet), ton-katsu (breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet), fried shrimp, chicken nuggets, spinach, natto (fermented soy bean), menchi-katsu (breaded, deep-fried ground meat cutlet), chicken-katsu (breaded, deep-fried chicken), low-calorie-katsu (breaded, deep-fried ???), cream croquette, eggplant, mushroom, sausage, buta-shabu (slices of pork boiled in hot soup), gyuu-shabu (slice of beef boiled in hot soup), squid, boiled shrimp, boiled chicken, hamburger, fried chicken, beef-katsu (breaded, deep-fried…you get it), cheese, crispy chicken, fish fillet, quail egg, egg omelet, mixed vegetables, mixed seafood, fried salmon, half-boiled egg, tuna, ripe tomato, potato salad, bacon, garlic, hardboiled egg, corn, pickled shallots

Total: 9210 yen (US $120), tax included

A standard plate of CoCo Ichi curry comes with only 200g of rice, but one particularly fired-up member of our team (we’ll call him ‘D’) insisted on more, asserting: “200 grams of rice is for the weak and incompetent! Real men order 400 grams, no, 600 grams!”

The register staff, unaware that D just gets like this sometimes, thereupon punched in the order for 600 grams, and there was no turning back.

D did have a point though. If you’re going to eat $100 worth of curry, you’re going to need a lot of rice; otherwise you’re just having a fried-food snack party with curry dip.

Some time later, the order was brought to our table and set out before us with individual plates holding the boiled dishes and other individual toppings surrounding the giant centerpiece plate supporting a mound of fried foods stacked atop a giant bed of rice.

We were apparently supposed to dress the curry ourselves, and we wouldn’t have it any other way!

What ensued was an epic tale of teamwork and heroism, as our team of 4 reporters worked together through tears and meat sweat to build a splendid Mt. Olympus of curry—and then tear it down to nothing like furious Titans.

The curry, which we ordered at a moderate spiciness of 3, was as delicious as to be expected from CoCo Ichi. Like eating a giant ice cream sundae, there were so many different flavors to be enjoyed on the plate that each bite brought something new.

CoCo Ichi curry with a side of everything may actually not be such a bad idea for a group dinner party, er, epic manly meat feast.

Speaking of epic manliness, about 20 minutes into eating reporter D seemed to be eating at a slower pace than the others.

Regardless, we finished the plate with not a crumb left over! That’s how it’s done!

While it may seem like we were wastefully playing with food for shits and giggles, as we mentioned before, the meal tasted fantastic and was almost something like a private-buffet experience enjoyed between friends. We believe that by no means were “playing with food,” and we would even recommend ordering CoCo Ichi side-of-everything curry to try yourself—as long as you’ve got enough buddies with you to finish what you started.

Photos & Video: RocketNews24.


[ Read in Japanese ]