Alk Road finds a way to turn a negative into a positive.
There are a lot of curry restaurants to choose from in Tokyo, but Spice Curry Alk Road stands out from many of its rice-and-roux rivals by virtue of its outstanding customer reviews. Diners are so satisfied that they’ve made Alk Road one of the top 100 curry restaurants in Tokyo based on average review scores on Tabelog, Japan’s most popular user-submitted restaurant site.
Alk Road is just a one-minute walk from Iidabashi Station, so you could say that it has a great location…but as we found out on our visit, you could also make an argument that it has the worst location for a curry restaurant in Tokyo. If you head to the restaurant’s address, you’ll find yourself in front of this building.
And yes, you will see the word “curry,” written in Japanese as カレー, on the signage.
But the writing in front of “curry,” 上等? They’re the characters for “Joto,” as in “Joto Curry,” a curry restaurant chain that is not the independent Alk Road.
So if you were to amble up here, you might think that Alk Road has gone out of business and been replaced by a Joto branch. A restaurant closing down and then a different one with the same specialty moving into the same spot isn’t all that unusual in Japan, since it lowers the renovation costs that you might have with, say, converting a yakiniku restaurant into a conveyor belt sushi joint.
However, if you look down at the entrance to Joto Curry, you’ll see that Alk Road’s name is written next to the door…
…and both Joto Curry’s and Alk Road’s names are written on the noren (cloth banner) hung above the entrance.
Things get even more confusing when you step inside, since the first floor is clearly a Joto Curry branch. If you want to find Alk Road, what you have to do is turn to your right…
…and follow the arrows pointing you up the stairs to the second floor…
…and then, finally, you’ll have arrived at Alk Road!
Yes, Alk Road has the confusing misfortune of being a curry restaurant that you can only access by first passing part-way through a different curry restaurant, and one that’s part of a famous chain to boot.
This might seem like a recipe for constant animosity between the upstairs/downstairs neighbors, but it turns out that Joto Curry and Alk Road aren’t exactly direct competitors. Whereas Joto’s specialty is Japanese-style curry, Alk Road’s focus is on Indian-style curry, which the second-floor restaurant’s chef makes from scratch every day.
While they’re both variations on the same basic concept (curry and rice), they use different kinds of roux, and different kinds of rice too – long-grain Indian rice for Alkroad’s curry, and short-grain Japanese rice for Joto Curry’s. So among diners in Japan, these two restaurants’ offerings are scratching different culinary itches, and even if you are in a perfectly 50-50 mood as to which type of curry they were craving, Alk Road actually offers a way to enjoy both in the same meal.
One of Alk Road’s menu items is the Special Combination, a plate of curry rice in which one half is Joto’s roux and a pork cutlet, and the other is your choice of one of Alk Road’s house-specialty spice curries.
▼ Our 1,400-yen (US$8.80) Special Combination of Johto katsu curry and Alk Road chicken spice curry
You also choose between Indian and Japanese rice for the Special Combination. We asked for the Indian rice, which made for a unique mixture of flavors and textures when paired with the Japanese roux. Both curries were excellent on their own, with Alk Road’s giving us a complex mixture of spices and seasonings and Joto’s being a more straightforward spiciness with a hint of sweetness in its flavor profile, and at the center of the plate where it flowed into one another we got yet another intriguingly fresh flavor.
Should you want even more variety, Alk Road’s counter has an array of spices that you can shake onto your curry at your discretion, such as Cayenne pepper, roasted cumin, garam masala, and ajwain chili powder.
This one-of-a-kind collaborative curry combination is something that’s only possible by nature of having two different curry restaurants operating so close to one another, and through it Alk Road has cleverly turned a negative aspect of its location into a positive. So while the search for Alk Road might be a little confusing, it’s well worth going to the trouble to find, just like with a certain soft serve ice cream specialist elsewhere in Tokyo.
Restaurant information
Spice Curry Alk Road / Spice Curry アルクロード
Address: Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Iidabashi 4-8-11 2nd floor
住所 東京都千代田区飯田橋4丁目8−11 2F
Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. (weekdays), 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 530 p.m.-8 p.m. (weekends, holidays)
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