California: Hurry Curry of Tokyo

The second major advantage California has going for it besides the incredible weather (and at this time of year, I question myself daily why I don’t live in Cali), is the selection and quality of Asian restaurants available.  My friends M and T live down the street from Little Osaka, and yes there is such a thing, so you know we had to hit it.  Although Little Osaka really is little (a few blocks), the different types of Japanese restaurants available are the most I’ve seen outside of Japan – and Hurry Curry of Tokyo is one of them.  Other than my mom’s homemade Japanese curry and those that I’ve had in Japan this is the first restaurant Japanese curry I’ve eaten in North America and it was delicious.  Nothing like Indian or Thai curry, Japanese curry is really dark, spicy, a bit sweet and traditionally made with very thin shaved slices of beef.  But my favourite is Katsu curry.  Katsu, which is a panko crusted pork tenderloin that has been pounded flat (a Japanese version of schnitzel).  The Katsu is served with Japanese rice and covered with curry – so good!  For dessert, we popped across the street to Beard Papa’s for chou pastry stuffed with vanilla custard cream.  It all brings me back to my days living in Japan 🙂