Katsu Curry Ouroboros

August 19, 2024 5:06 AM

The Katsuification of Britain Tim Anderson writes for Vittles Magazine about the phenomenon of katsuification—the process under which everything in Britain has become katsu curry—and how this can be explained by the cyclical history of the dish.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs (50 comments total)

Thanks , I was almost as confused about this as Mary Berry.
posted by Phanx at 6:06 AM on August 19

I’ve never liked Japanese curry - it’s always been a pale imitation of actual curry, whether from India or Malaysia. That Wagamama is behind the craze in Britain doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
posted by awfurby at 6:23 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]

I am a huge fan of Tim Anderson! He is such a joy to listen to when he is one of the panelists on The Kitchen Cabinet.
posted by Kitteh at 6:25 AM on August 19 [2 favorites]

I was confused because katsu curry has a somewhat different meaning in Japan. Apparently in Britain it just refers to Japanese curry. Or at least a British version of it that incorporates coconut, invented at Wagamama.

it’s always been a pale imitation of actual curry

I felt that way for many years but I've learned to appreciate Japanese curry for what it is, a completely different cuisine from Indian curry or Thai curry or Vietnamese curry (all of which are very different from each other). Also Japanese curry shops in Japan are very innovative, and there's quite a bit of variety in styles.
posted by Umami Dearest at 6:30 AM on August 19 [23 favorites]

I'm going to pop in here to say that I like the British-style katsu curry. There are far, far better curries available, and far, far better Japanese dishes available, but if, like me, you like your food wet, then a katsu curry sauce is far, far better than a watery gravy.

Great? No. Good enough for what it is? Yep.
posted by YoungStencil at 6:46 AM on August 19 [7 favorites]

Ha, oops. Not being much of a curry person, I've never actually ordered katsu curry - and therefore I've been blithely assuming the British version was the same as the Japanese version, admittedly with occasional mental gymnastics required to make that assumption work.

But anyway, if anyone's in London and fancies a really good katsu, with or without curry, Tanakatsu in Islington is amazing. Worth travelling for.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:52 AM on August 19 [2 favorites]

I'll also add that I enjoy Japenese curry, it's a confusing name, because it's nothing like the Indian style curry I grew up with apart from having spices in.

The 'british' version only applies to mass-market; I've never used coconut in my home kitchen to make it. That said, I also blend the spice mix myself, rather than using one of the S&B curry blocks from the supremarket, which is the traditional method.
posted by Braeburn at 6:56 AM on August 19

Does Britain have legit katsu houses? Trying a proper pork loin katsu with mounds of shredded cabbage in Japan was a bit of a revelation, and I was overjoyed when some Japanese chains started opening in Toronto.
posted by sid at 7:09 AM on August 19 [4 favorites]

I'm shocked to learn that the British don't include the best part of katsu curry in katsu curry. Sometimes I feel a little bad making jokes about British cuisine... But then I learn things like this?!
posted by Pitachu at 7:39 AM on August 19 [4 favorites]

This is a great line: After all, as a British-inspired Japanese dish that’s now becoming a Japanese-inspired British dish, katsu curry is an ouroboros – and an insatiable one. Nothing can escape getting hoovered up in its gaping maw as it chomps away at its own tail.

Lots of brave people here advocating that there is a One True Curry. I'll never understand the desire for "correct" food. (But I also don't spend my days trying to categorise music into hyper-specific sub-sub-genres, so maybe I'm not the target audience who finds this type of pedantry fun. I just like food that tastes good.)

I love a katsu curry, but I also love chip shop curry, which as the article points out, are close relatives. And now that I think about it German currywurst and Dutch curry chips are in the same family. It's as if though certain flavours and spice mixes are adopted and adapted into food cultures across the globe.
posted by slimepuppy at 7:40 AM on August 19 [15 favorites]

Early Japanese curries were inspired by London-based Crosse & Blackwell’s curry powder, and informed by British Victorian recipes (which included ingredients like apples, bananas, dripping, honey, and a characteristic flour-based roux to thicken the sauce like a gravy)

I should've known the British is behind this!! *flashback to my friends and I reading up on a typical Japanese curry recipe and going, apples??*

That said, katsu curry is its own thing, but it's not helping my search results, because not too long ago, I could at least have the shorthand that katsu is pork, so I should avoid that, lol.
posted by cendawanita at 8:26 AM on August 19 [2 favorites]

(that said, I'm going to need a moment to get over my knee jerk reaction that there's a mainstream 'Japanese' curry thing that's done with the British choice of coconut milk - which I find is too sweet for most of the savoury dishes it goes into. I'll get over it. I won't order it but I'll get over it.)
posted by cendawanita at 8:29 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]

UKican here, and this article was my first contact with the word katsu, so the katsuification might not yet be complete.
posted by BCMagee at 8:30 AM on August 19

UK Mefite here—can confirm, it's everywhere.

I'm not surprised that the S&B katsu curry blocks from the supermarket only date to 2021. That's the year my family tried them—during lockdown, that time of "let's try something new because we can't go anywhere new". (The kids liked it; we made it a few times. Never tried it at Wagamama, but I'm pretty sure I'd had some in Japan years ago.)

There have been more Japanese restaurants around Edinburgh in recent years in general. I suspect the hand of Brexit encouraging more non-European places. At the same time I've noticed two local Chinese takeways shut their doors in the past year or two and not get replaced—places serving old-style UK-ified Chinese dishes, whose aging proprietors hit retirement age. Bit of a shame, as the newer more authentic Chinese places driven by 20 years of Chinese postgraduate students are great but not the same. Sometimes the faux dish that over time became its own thing is what hits the spot. Which brings us back, Ouroboros-like, to katsu curry...

(On preview: Maybe not everywhere. "Edinburgh and London" values of everywhere.)
posted by rory at 8:35 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]

I should've known the British is behind this!! *flashback to my friends and I reading up on a typical Japanese curry recipe and going, apples??*

not 100% sure of the origin of apples in Japanese curry, but I think the story behind it might be a different rabbit hole
posted by okonomichiyaki at 8:36 AM on August 19 [5 favorites]

Katsu currywurst. It’s inevitable.
posted by Phanx at 8:44 AM on August 19

My dad grew up in Fiji, whose population was and is almost half Indian descent, so ate and cooked (and still cooks) a lot of curry. He often put apples or raisins in his, too. British colonial influence, sure, but it was Fiji Indian cooks making them in his childhood, so I have no idea what's authentic. A goat curry I once had in Suva was my acme of curry—can't remember if it had fruit in it.
posted by rory at 8:44 AM on August 19 [3 favorites]

Katsu currywurst. It’s inevitable.

Pop into any Glasgow chippy and order a single sausage wi' curry sauce and you're good.
posted by rory at 8:48 AM on August 19 [3 favorites]

For anyone who is ever in or near Portland, Oregon, the Japanese curry at Kalé is complex and revelatory.
posted by Gadarene at 9:11 AM on August 19 [4 favorites]

I am weirdly reminded of "Tex-Mex" food in the US and how that developed over time.

A lot of people just think of it as "Mexican food", but it's actually a sort of mush-together of northern-regional Mexican, Spanish, and then American ranchers. There was a lot of American influence on it as it developed - especially in the 20th Century, as cheeses from the United States got more cheap and people south of the US/Mexican border could throw that in. That's the style of cuisine a lot of the cheap "Mexican" food lines in the US use - most especially "Taco Bell" fast food and "El Paso" food products. Then over time, especially as more people from Mexico made it to the US and set up proper Mexican restaurants and taco trucks in the cities, people in the US started to get more particular about the distinction between "Mexican" and "Tex Mex" - to the point that even Taco Bell is trying to go upscale with a new "cantina" menu that uses a slightly different flavor profile.

It reminds me of this same India-by-way-of-Britain-to-Japan-but-then-back-to-Britain thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:22 AM on August 19 [2 favorites]

Oh yes, S&B Golden Curry is a completely different thing than a typical North Indian restaurant style curry. I grew up eating it at home (Koreans picked up Japanese "Western food" during the Japanese colonial period, i.e. hamburger steak) and it remains a comfort food.

I'm tickled by the idea that a food writer thinks that Katsu is a region in Japan. I'm now imagining a Phantom Tollbooth style map labeled "Province of Katsu" with the Sesame Seed islands off the southern coast and the Foothills of Cabbage and Dressing to the east.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:35 AM on August 19 [12 favorites]

Also, I once missed the train back to Tokyo because we were committed to eating yet another katsu at some famous joint in Kyoto. Mmm. Tender pork loin.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:37 AM on August 19 [2 favorites]

I think for lunch I'll have the American version of katsu, from the local Hawaiian barbecue place. There's also a place down the road selling $50 wagyu katsu sandos.
posted by bgrebs at 10:32 AM on August 19

That picture of the Wagamama curry looks vile to me. The texture is viscous three-dimensional gloop, the colour is unappealingly cream-mustard, and most infuriating: why would you put a football of hot, steaming rice on top of and pressing down upon freshly cooked, crisp katsu, rendering it both soggy and difficult to access? Someone please defend this thing to me because I'm losing faith in humanity

Anyway RIP Kaiju Curry, the best Japanese-style katsu curry I've ever had – in Canada or Japan (and I've had a lot of it in both).
posted by ordinary_magnet at 11:18 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]

I always prefer katsu by itself with katsu sauce instead of curry. Not that I don't enjoy Japanese curry but I like it plain on rice or thinned out into a soup for udon.

When I can't find katsu sauce in a store (or don't want to pay imported food prices for it) I'll just pick up HP sauce because it's fairly similar.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:25 AM on August 19

Despite the headline, I did enjoy reading the article, which made me aware of an all consuming phenomenon that had pretty much passed me by, unless you count my occasionally purchasing katsu chicken salad from M&S. Well, I guess I also really like curry sauce with my fish and chips, so clearly I have been part of it all long...
posted by Cannon Fodder at 12:09 PM on August 19

I thought katsu curry was supposed to be a way of salvaging leftover katsu (which, once the crispiness is gone, becomes a lot less appealing)?
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:22 PM on August 19 [1 favorite]

"I should've known the British is behind this!! *flashback to my friends and I reading up on a typical Japanese curry recipe and going, apples??*"

Brit here! I do love Katsu curry and sometimes make my own sauce, which is roughly composed of tomato ketchup, curry powder, ripe bananas and... yes, apple. It tastes just as good as any of the Japanese curry products I've bought.

It sometimes isn't the most visually appealing food. I visited a "Katsu curry restaurant" in Shanghai, apparently one of a chain. As with a lot of the fast food joints they had illustrated menus, so the picture for the chicken Katsu showed something covered in brown sauce next to a pile of rice. As did the one for the pork version. Every picture was pretty much identical.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 2:19 PM on August 19 [1 favorite]

"British colonial influence, sure, but it was Fiji Indian cooks making them in his childhood, so I have no idea what's authentic."

'Authentic' can be a pretty strange thing. I have a couple of recipes in a book of regional cooking I brought back from India that use tomato ketchup. The book explained that ketchup was an exotic ingredient and that if you didn't use that for the tomato part of the recipe, then it wasn't authentic. Which just seemed strange to this Brit.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 2:25 PM on August 19 [1 favorite]

I haven't had katsu curry per se (and am still a little vague on what, exactly, it is) because all the offerings under than name where I live seem to be meat. I was under the impression that 'curry' is itself a fairly artificial category anyway.
Massive, massive fan of S&B curry blocks though, and apart from leaving the meat out, I just use it like it says on the packet. It's in the 'emergency dinner' rotation.
Also, I deeply admire how the British can make anything into a chip flavor and look forward to enjoying the products of this dark art again soon.
posted by ngaiotonga at 2:35 PM on August 19 [1 favorite]

Perchance to dream of katsu curry.

Brilliant writing! I’d noticed them more and more on trips home the last few years and was happy to see it.

why would you put a football of hot, steaming rice on top of and pressing down upon freshly cooked, crisp katsu, rendering it both soggy and difficult to access?

It’s upside down!
posted by ellieBOA at 2:47 PM on August 19

I’ve never liked Japanese curry - it’s always been a pale imitation of actual curry, whether from India or Malaysia.

honestly the long and short of it is that it is, effectively, just beef stew with garam masala mixed in, served over rice — in a sense it's fairly "place, Japan"

it's still very funny to me though that in the UK, the "official" name for Japanese-style curry came from naming it after a reasonably common topping (a breaded deep-fried pork cutlet) and nothing to do with the foodstuff itself, like if the UK called hot dogs "ketchup sausages"
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:04 PM on August 19 [2 favorites]

Man, I like food. Do you guys like food? Shit tastes great!
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 5:28 PM on August 19 [2 favorites]

Psht! Unless it comes from the Foode' region of France it's all just sparkling edibles.
posted by evilDoug at 7:59 PM on August 19 [2 favorites]

It’s upside down!

...you'd normally serve the katsu on top of the rice, all of which with the sauce underneath it??
posted by Dysk at 8:17 PM on August 19

...you'd normally serve the katsu on top of the rice, all of which with the sauce underneath it??

No no, the cutlet position is the weird upside down one, but it coheres with how western food translates rice (a carb) to be in the same position as say, mashed potatoes, with the protein being the major/star part of the dish translated as the biggest-looking piece. Asian cuisine thinks of rice as a main the way you should think of pasta, not potatoes. So rice, then katsu, then the curry ladled to the side (maybe on top a bit, depending on the custom).
posted by cendawanita at 8:36 PM on August 19

It can vary a bit in Japan, at least — often the cutlet goes on top of the curry, which is itself poured over top of the rice
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:39 PM on August 19

Oh yeah - DoctorFedora is reminding me also, if you're having something crispy like a fried cutlet (or tempura), you don't want to ruin that by serving it in a position where it arrives to the table soggy. So whichever the order for the gravy unless you're eating it immediately the katsu goes last/stays crispy.
posted by cendawanita at 8:42 PM on August 19

Yeah, I've seen a variety of serving arrangements for Japanese curry, but not once have I ever seen rice on top of sauce, which the upside down comment implied.
posted by Dysk at 9:18 PM on August 19

actually in recent years there's been a trend in Japan toward what's being called "spice curry," which is kind of more South Asian-style, and that is often served on a big place with the sauce spread out over it, and then the rice placed on top in the center, though that's not really "Japanese curry" so much by that point
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:29 PM on August 19 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile Italians look at Japanese Neapolitan pasta which is made with ketchup and delicious, and react, "This is not pasta"
posted by polymodus at 11:44 PM on August 19

To be fair, it's more kin to the Filipino spaghetti such as the one popularized by Jollibee: a direct consequence of proximity to the US Naval Base larder - right down to the sausages, the Kraft slices, and the tomato ketchup.

Sometimes it's yoshoku sometimes it's imperialism sometimes it's both.

(You can actually track the impact of American Italian rendition of tomato-based pastas via the US Navy and how it explains the various Asian analogues. Pretty sure South Korea has their own too, but they pivoted into chicken and beer in a big way for some reason, though they share the same fondness for extruded cheese product.)
posted by cendawanita at 11:54 PM on August 19 [4 favorites]

cendawanita, katsu is only sometimes pork. It means “cutlet”, like “cuts” (if the Japanese say cutlet it would come out as the rather more unwieldy “kattoletto” (my closest guess, anyway, based on a year of living immersed in the language).

So anyway, chicken katsu is totally a thing, like you can get chicken schnitzel instead of Wiener schnitzel these days in most places that sell schnitzel, you can get chicken katsu in most places you can get pork katsu (in Japan).

I also agree that tonkatsu (katsu on shredded cabbage) is the superior product.
posted by antinomia at 11:18 AM on August 20 [1 favorite]

Yes, it's more common now, esp with the expanding halal market (among other reasons I'm sure), but 'katsu' with no additional noun is traditionally pork, if you noticed when you were there. 'Only sometimes' does a lot of lifting, ime.
posted by cendawanita at 11:30 AM on August 20

Lol now I've found myself in a rabbithole - Soranews: The UK thinks Japanese curry is katsu curry, and people aren't happy about it

In Japan, katsu curry has two important elements, aside from rice: the katsu and the curry . The curry is the Japanese-style roux mentioned above, while the katsu, which means “fried cutlet”, is a piece of breaded fried meat, Usually made with pork.

In recent years, however, people in Britain have started to call the Japanese curry roux “katsu curry”, even if it doesn't contain the vital “katsu” meat cutlet.

It's an issue that has Japanese curry lovers fired up, giving rise to the hashtag #KatsuCurryPolice on Twitter.

Katsu Curry Police!
posted by cendawanita at 11:36 AM on August 20

Another one here: In Japanese, katsu means “cutlet,” and the king of katsu is the pork cutlet. The association between katsu and pork is so strong that when “katsu” is said by itself, it’s understood to mean pork cutlet, and you have to explicitly mention beef or chicken if you’re talking about those kinds.

Which tallies with my experience.
posted by cendawanita at 11:39 AM on August 20

Have lived in Japan for a decade and a half, can confirm that "katsu" with no modifier means pork by default. Incidentally, "katsu" is a shortening of the already-extant Japanese loanword カツレツ "katsuretsu," meaning "cutlet," which is decidedly clumsy by the orthography standards that developed over time for importing words into Japanese. (Modern orthography standards would go with "kattoretto," but also there's already a The Word For That in Japanese at this point.)

So yeah, between "katsu" and "anime," that's two loanwords now that come from Japanese, that are used in English, that are themselves based on pre-existing English words.

Separately, for my money the best Japanese curry is Kanazawa curry. It just kind of goes for maximum junk food status: it's served in a long stainless steel dish, with a flat layer of rice at the bottom that the curry is then poured over top of, completely covering it. The curry itself is incredibly thick and rich (they conventionally serve it with a fork rather than a spoon), and then that is conventionally topped with some sort of fried thing (unlike standard Japanese curry, the pork cutlet is generally regarded as a standard feature rather than as an optional upgrade), and a big mountain of shredded cabbage to kind of help balance out the richness. Go Go Curry is apparently kind of everywhere now, but I still think Champion, the originator of the style, is still the best Kanazawa Curry chain.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:54 PM on August 20 [1 favorite]

when “katsu” is said by itself, it’s understood to mean pork cutlet

Especially when used in the term "katsu curry", the "katsu" is simply short for "tonkatsu". (The "ton" part means pork.) Anyone ordering something called "katsu curry" in Japan would be very confused if they got anything other than pork.

I haven't tried Champion, but I did enjoy Alba (founded in Ishikawa-ken in 1971). They were the originator of "Home Run Curry", in which the components of the dish (fried egg, sausage, fried prawn, pork cutlet) are arranged to represent a baseball diamond.

I think that in recent years some of the most interesting and creative curries are "original style" (as opposed to Indofuu Indian style or Oufuu European style), often incorporating coconut milk and other Southeast Asian influences while maintaining their identity as Japanese curry.
posted by Umami Dearest at 9:08 PM on August 20 [1 favorite]

In recent years, however, people in Britain have started to call the Japanese curry roux “katsu curry”, even if it doesn't contain the vital “katsu” meat cutlet.

See also "tikka masala" from "chicken tikka masala" in basically the same way.
posted by Dysk at 5:22 AM on August 21

love a katsu curry, but I also love chip shop curry, which as the article points out, are close relatives.

I knew they tasted pretty much the same - Glico curry cubes make a sauce that is shockingly similar to UK chip shop curry sauce, but I thought it was a sort of convergent evolution, rather than an actual family link, so this is super interesting to me!
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:52 PM on August 21