I didn’t clarify in yesterday’s post that I had not yet eaten the Cafe Mami katsu curry, since I had tried the two different preparations at home. Today was a half day for Miles, so we had lunch at the Cafe. He ordered the tatsu (fried chicken) again, and this time I had the cutlet curry (the actual name on the menu) with a pork cutlet.
You can see some obvious differences in comparison to my recipe. The sauce is much smoother, nothing like the “sludge” in my version. It’s also served to the side instead of directly over the rice. They automatically provide a spoon with the dish, presumably so you can spoon as much sauce as you like over the rice, but why wouldn’t you want it all on the rice?
As for the taste, the sauce is more like a thick pork gravy flavored with curry. There are sliced carrots and onions, as well as bits of shredded pork, probably from a chunk of pork simmered in the sauce. Although the waitress warned me “the curry is spicy,” I found it milder than my version.
This was by no means an inferior curry, just a different regional variation that I was all too happy to eat. As I left, I told the cook “oishkatta desu” (“it was delicious”) — it was a genuine compliment, not merely a polite formality.