Curry is a delicacy dear to innumerable people in Asia — I of course, is one of them. Curry originated hundreds of years ago from India, which has become one of the most popular dish all over the globe. Using coriander, cumin, and turmeric (thanks Wikipedia) as the main spices, this savory dish has diverse variants with distinct tastes developed in the respective countries. In Japan, curry was recently introduced during Meiji period (100 years ago) before it is widely consumed in the present day. Despite the Japanese curry being one of the most recent curry concoction, it has been one of the most well know type of curry dish. So here comes CoCo ICHIBANYA - the largest curry restaurant chain in the world, serving authentic and of course delicious curry dishes!


In Indonesia, Kokoichi — that's what they call the restaurant — can be found in several locations, one of them is located in Gandaria City, South Jakarta. The restaurant interior is designed to be very open with the seats divided into two area — inside and outside the retail space. The interior design is simple, almost as simple as fast food restaurants' interior and layout. Not much to be discussed regarding the design, so, lets talk about the foods!

Kokoichi provides customization of how we want our curry rice to be - the dish can be personalized with many choice of toppings, be it beef, fish, chicken, seafood, vegetables, you name it, and it could be available to choose. The restaurant also has some set menu options. By adding IDR 35K, I received a refillable glass of Ice Green Tea, I repeat, refillable, then, a small dish of salad, and 2 scoops of ice cream for the dessert. The mini salad dish was amazing! Do you remember how I loved Ichi Dough's Greeny Goody Salad and named it as the BEST salad ever? (Check it out HERE) It turns out that this mini salad had quite the same taste to it. And finally, I found that the vinaigrette, the dressing, was pretty much the same, containing sesame in it. I think it was the sesame that made the salad dressing tasted so savory, aromatic, and flavorful! If you are going for a full dish of salad, you can also choose from their comprehensive salad menu.

Ice Green Tea

Mini Salad

Kokoichi surely is well known not for its salad, but its curry dish! As I mentioned before, the restaurant provides limitless customization to the curry dish by the sheer numbers of topping. For starter, you could choose to have omelette curry or just the usual curry rice. Then, you could opt for more or less rice for the standard curry rice, while the amount of rice for the omelette curry is fixed. You could also choose the level of spiciness (up to Level 5). After that, you can choose your additional toppings for your curry dish. On that very day, I went for the Chicken Cutlet & Vegetable Omelette Curry with standard spiciness.

Chicken Cutlet Omelette Curry (77K) + Vegetable Topping (21K)

On the table side, there was a jar of vegetable pickles called fukujinzuke. The freshness of the pickles uniquely elevated the taste of the curry which you should try.

Fukujinzuke

Eating this curry dish was such a memorable moment. Everything was almost perfect, except for the amount of the curry, I wonder if I could ask for extra curry.

Finished and satisfied with my curry cravings, I asked for the desserts. I chose vanilla and chocolate ice cream which tasted quite good. There were a wafer and assortment of sliced fruits accompanying the ice cream nicely.

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