This curry rice has so much meat it gets its own sound effect.

Prices have been going up and up for just about everything in Japan, and that includes the food at Cocoichibanya, Japan’s biggest curry rice restaurant chain. Cocoichi, as it’s also known, has seen its customer numbers slipping after a series of recent price hikes, with those customers who are still showing up paying, on average, more for their meals than they used to.

It’s with that background that Cocoichi has brought back its Nikukai/”Hunk of Meat” curry. Released for the first time in April of 2023, the exact name of this massive meaty dish has changed a few times, but it’s always something impactful. At one point it was called the “Bam! Hearty Tender Meat Curry,” and its newest iteration, being served at Cocoichi right now, is the “Bam! Tender Meat with Garlic and Pepper Curry” (or the Horoniku Dokan with Garlic and Pepper Curry).

As with previous Nikukai curries, the newest version, which is the fifth generation, is available in a variety of “levels,” each one upping the amount of meat you get, with prices ranging from 1,690 yen (US$11.65) to 3,280 yen.

Even as our mouths watered, though, we couldn’t help noticing that all of these prices are higher than the last time around. Cocoichi releases a new Nikukai Curry version roughly every six months on a limited-time basis, and the newest dish is 40 yen more expensive, for each level, than its predecessor from last November. As a matter of fact, every single time the Nikukai Curry comes back, it’s gotten more expensive, with a Level 3 now costing 379 yen more than the first-gen dish of the same size did in spring of 2023.

However, with our boss picking up the tab for this taste test, we were able to temporarily set aside any concerns about the cost, and bask in the beauty of the Bam! Tender Meat with Garlic and Pepper Curry.

Our ace reporter Mr. Sato, who’d drawn taste-testing duties, opted for the 2,220-yen Level 2, and even though it’s the second-smallest of the current Nikukai curry quartet, it was still a veritable meat mountain of steamed pork shoulder loin.

With his expectations rising as high as the pork pile, Mr. Sato picked up a piece of meat in his spoon. Visually, it reminded him of a boulder, but the pork is incredibly tender, so much so that you can easily slice it with just the side of your spoon.

The roux has rich soy sauce notes to it, and is seasoned with four different types of coarse-ground pepper (black, white, green, and pink), plus a sprinkling of fried garlic chips. This is a very aromatic plate of curry rice, and the pepper and garlic shine through stronger than any other flavors in the roux, for a result akin to what’s sometimes called “spice curry” (not to be confused with spicy curry) in Japan.

It’s an invigorating mix of flavors and juices, and Mr. Sato thinks it’d be a great plate to charge yourself up on an otherwise stamina-sapping hot summer’s day, a sentiment you also get from the rocking-out promotional video Cocoichi has for the new Nikukai curry.

However, we’re not sure if the Bam! Tender Meat with Garlic and Pepper Curry will still be around when we get to the hottest part of the year, since it’s a limited-time menu item with no specified end-of-availability date. Because of that, we’d advise finding a slot for it in your meal plans sooner rather than later…or maybe two slots, considering how huge it is.

Related: Cocoichibanya location list
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