Sunday, October 02, 2011

Japan's CoCo Ichibanya in Singapore

Nasu Kare Raisu

Yesterday morning, we were going past 313@Somerset and noticed that a line was forming in front of the mall. We figured that maybe it was another one of those H&M or Uniqlo openings, or maybe some kind of Apple product finally being made available here, and didn't think anything of it further. It was only this morning that I finally realized what it was for: Japan's CoCo Ichibanya chain of curry shops had finally opened an outlet here in Singapore (313 Orchard Road #B3-25, 6636-7280), and they were giving away some kind of free meal vouchers for the first people in line yesterday.

The vouchers surely were gone by now, but they were still running a 30% off promotion today, and I knew that this place was going to be crowded, especially being a Sunday on Orchard Road. So I scrambled down here just after their opening at 10 AM in order to try to beat the crowds, even though I was still stuffed from having eaten three roti prata earlier. And hence, I ended up trying to get the lightest thing possible: a reduced size 150 gram serving with Japanese eggplant, in case you were wondering what those rather unsightly dark things were in the photo.

Yes, I liked it. In addition to your protein selection as well as your rice quantity, they also allowed you to customize your level of spiciness, which at my Level 2 out of 6 was a tad spicier than your typically mild Japanese curries. Using the tabletop bottle of powdered spices to manually crank it up after that resulted in a mildly pleasant bit of residual heat in my mouth and stomach afterwards. I still like its competitor Go! Go! Curry! upstairs at the food court for its uniquely bold curry taste, but these guys are also fun to go to with their orochon-like experience.

1 comment:

jsorger said...

I am very sad that you were not able to procure a free voucher. Sometimes you disappoint, bma. :)