Crown Ace Curry, Kanda

Very indecisive today. That can tend to happen, either because I’m genuinely indecisive on the day or because I feel like going somewhere new and end up going to an area with few unexplored options left. In this case I rounded a corner after 20 minutes aimless wander, saw ‘curry’ and thought ‘bing!’

Plus, ‘Crown Ace’ is a helluva name, isn’t it? It makes you think the staff should have pompadours and poodle skirts and walk around saying “Solid, daddy-o,” instead of looking at the ground and shuffling between menial tasks.

But cheap curry can be its own reward. The expensive stuff often misses the impact that makes cheap Japanese curry great (which is probably a combination of sugar and processed hydrogenated fats). And the classy places never have enough pickles on the tables. Personally I always load up on this stuff – you can’t get vegetables at curry, and I tend to counteract the de-vegetal nature of the experience by eating half a jar of pickled onions and a similar quantity of radish, if they’re on offer. They were. I did.

Hey, this is why you’re fat. [No, I kid, you’re not fat. And I think a lot of the fun has gone out of that site. Stuff like ‘oooh, I chocolate-coated a Twinkie!’ isn’t daring. You have to sift through a bunch of weak stuff to find the 5-pound grilled cheese sandwich and the other genuinely horrifying creations that made the site great in the past.]

But seriously, this is fried chicken curry, and it was a great curry even if the chicken wasn’t much to write home about. Good thing I’m not specifically writing home right here. Hi Mom and Dad.

Well, it’s ‘ace’, as they say in the provinces. Crown gets my personal recommendation as the king of curry.

At least today.
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