Katsu Curry

Japanese curry came via the British Royal Navy in the late 19th century — they had adapted Indian curry into a flour-thickened stew suitable for ship galleys, and the Imperial Japanese Navy adopted it in the Meiji era to combat beriberi — championed by navy surgeon Takagi Kanehiro in the 1880s after he observed the British navy had no beriberi; the first official recipe appears in the 1908 Navy Cookbook (Kaigun Kappojutsu Sankosho). Katsu curry as a combination plate is much later: originated in 1948 at the Ginza Swiss (Grill Swiss) Western-style restaurant in Tokyo, when regular customer Shigeru Chiba — an infielder for the Yomiuri Giants — asked the kitchen to lay a pork cutlet directly over the curry rice.

Two yoshoku (Western-style) imports collided — 1899 Tokyo's tonkatsu over British naval curry that Japan adopted from the Royal Navy in the Meiji era. Rice goes in last as a dam.

A plate split in two: one side a mound of white rice half-blanketed in thick brown Japanese curry sauce, the other a sliced breaded pork cutlet, golden and crackling. Eat with a spoon — the curry binds rice and katsu in each bite. The crust holds for the first few minutes; once curry soaks in fully, it goes soft and that's the trade-off you accept.

The curry roux is what makes it Japanese, not Indian — flour browned in butter and oil, then bloomed with curry powder, beef stock, apple, honey, sometimes chocolate or coffee. The result is sweeter, thicker, less aromatic than its source. Storebought roux blocks (S&B Golden, House Vermont) actually outperform most home-built versions because of long-fermented spice oils; restaurants almost universally start from a commercial roux.