Jul 21, 2022 22:00:00

I ate Katsu curry from Wagamama, a Japanese restaurant that caused a mysterious Katsu curry boom in England, in London.

Curry has become a very popular dish in Britain, which once colonized India, due to the large number of Indian immigrants. Recently, Japanese-style curry that was introduced from England has been re-imported to England and has become popular, and especially

Katsu curry has become an unprecedented boom . I was really curious about the taste of the katsu curry at the Japanese restaurant ' Wagamama ', which was founded in London in 1992, which sparked this katsu curry boom, so I actually tried it in London.

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https://www.wagamama.com/

Wagamama is a chain that started from a noodle restaurant that opened in Bloomsbury , London on April 22, 1992, and is said to have introduced Katsu curry born in Japan to the United Kingdom for the first time. This time I came to Wagamama's Holborn store. The address is ' ground floor, 123 kingsway basement and, London WC2B 6PA '.


Arrived at Wagamama's Holborn store.

As it is a Japanese restaurant, if you look at the menu table, you can see pictures of yakitori and ramen. There were also names such as 'donburi' and 'teppanyaki'. The founder of Wagamama is from Hong Kong, not Japanese.

The interior is very large and bright, with many long tables lined up like a university cafeteria.

There was 'katsu' in the 'curry' column of the menu, so I ordered 'chicken'.

The clerk writes the ordered menu number and table number on the paper place mat laid on the table. By reading the QR code printed on this place mat with your smartphone, you can pay for the order by credit card payment.

Low-salt soy sauce and ordinary soy sauce, malt vinegar and cutlery, which are familiar in British cuisine, were placed on the table.

This is the katsu curry that was brought in after waiting for about 15 minutes. The price is 11.7 pounds (about 1900 yen), which is higher than Japan. Japanese general cutlet curry has cutlet on top of rice, but Wagamama's cutlet curry was shocked to see that rice was on top of the cutlet for some reason.

Wagamama's official recipe site explains, 'One and only. Katsu curry. This Wagamama legend is definitely Japanese comfort food .' However, it looks quite different from the familiar Katsu curry in Japan.

I compared the size side by side with the iPhone 12 mini with a long side of 131.5 mm.

The roux is slightly yellowish and contains no ingredients. Impression that the amount of roux is obviously small for rice and cutlet.

Cutlet is fried thin chicken. According to local residents, there are many Jews and Muslims in the UK, and cutlets made with pork, which is familiar in Japan, are often NG, so cutlets are chicken.

The garnish salad looks like this.

First of all, I will eat roux with rice. Although it looks like curry, it doesn't feel spicy at all, and it's quite sweet as a curry, and you can hardly feel the aroma of spices. Looking at the recipe, it says that it contains coconut milk and sugar in addition to chicken stock, curry powder, turmeric, and soy sauce, so it feels like curry for young children is even less irritating. The rice is Japonica rice, which is the same as in Japan, but I got the impression that the texture is a little dry.

This time I tried it with cutlet. The contents of the cutlet are chicken with less fat and are light. The batter is freshly fried and crispy. However, the amount of roux was too small for rice and cutlet, so I had a hard time adjusting when eating. Also, since the taste of curry roux is extremely weak, the taste of chicken cutlet is not swallowed by the flavor of curry, and the taste is quite different from Japanese cutlet curry. If you are interested, please try it and see the gap.