For those times when you really want curry, but don’t really want rice.
Coco Ichi, also known as Coco Ichibanya, is Japan’s most popular chain of curry restaurants, and with good reason. Delicious and inexpensive, Coco Ichi’s curry rice has been the culinary savior of people with empty stomachs and almost empty wallets for decades.
But while just about everyone loves Coco Ichi’s curry, some modern diners aren’t quite as crazy about the carb-laden foundation the roux is poured on. So for them, the chain is rolling out a new line of menu items it’s calling Coco de Off Curry, which uses almost no rice at all.
Here’s an example.
“But wait,” you might be saying. “There’s totally a bunch of rice on that plate!” Actually, though, there’s only 30 grams (1 ounce) of rice, 80 percent less than you’ll find in a normal plate of Coco Ichi curry. Look closely and you’ll see that while there’s a mound of white rice on the left, the rest of the granular plate covering is a little more beige in color, and that’s because it’s diced cauliflower instead.
▼ Another Coco de Off Curry option
Instead of the standard 150 grams of rice, Coco de Off Curry gets you 120 grams of cauliflower and 30 grams of rice, dramatically cutting down the dish’s carb footprint. Available nationwide nationwide starting December 1 and priced at 690 yen (US$6.10) in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, and Osaka (670 yen elsewhere in Japan), the low-carb curry configurations are part of Coco Ichi’s continuing effort to accommodate as many palates as possible, and follow the chain’s introduction of vegan and halal curries.
However, while low-carb meals ostensibly appeal to those who are dieting or otherwise concerned with their nutritional intakes, it might be going a little far to label Coco de Off Curry as super-healthy. Initially, three topping combinations are being offered: spinach and fried chicken, mini hamburger steak and cheese (both pictured above), and squid and sausage.
Those do all sound tasty, though, and besides you can’t expect the restaurant that recently made us a seven-kilogram (15-pound) order of curry to completely shun culinary decadence, can you?
Source: Coco Ichibanya via Niconico News via Jin
Featured image: Facebook/カレーハウスCoCo壱番屋（ココイチ）
Top image ©SoraNews24
Follow Casey on Twitter, where he wishes Coco Ichi would bring back its banana curry topping.