Curry Udon

Curry came to Japan via the British navy in the Meiji period and was domesticated into a thickened, mild stew; curry udon is the noodle-shop response to its popularity. The dish is most often credited to Sanchoan, a soba shop near Waseda University in Tokyo, around 1904 — by accounts the shop, threatened when a curry restaurant opened nearby, adapted curry into a dashi-based udon broth thickened with starch so it would cling to the noodles. The attribution is contested: another long-running shop, Asamatsuan, is sometimes named as the first to formally put 'curry nanban' on a menu, and a separate Osaka origin is also claimed. What the sources agree on is the Meiji-era timing and the core idea of dissolving curry into dashi rather than serving it as a separate sauce.

Fat, slippery udon dragged up out of a thick, spice-warm broth that clings to each strand and spatters easily — many shops hand out paper bibs. The flavor is curry first, then the bonito-kombu dashi and soy underneath, far gentler and more savory than curry over rice. The noodles should be soft with a faint spring; the broth should coat a spoon but still pour, not sit as a paste.

The starch thickening is the point. Curry over rice can be loose because the rice holds it, but a broth for noodles must be lightened with dashi yet thick enough to ride up on the udon — so it is reduced or finished with a slurry of potato or kuzu starch into a clinging consistency. Using dashi instead of water gives the glutamate-rich savory base (kombu glutamate plus bonito inosinate) that keeps the curry from tasting flat against the bland noodles. Slicing the meat thin lets it cook in the broth without toughening.