Oy, @Sgee, you’re not supposed to be enabling me! I really, really need to work through some of these boxes before I move to more sophisticated offerings.
That said, I kinda really want to check out this Private Chinese Tea Ceremony:
But am also confident knowing that I’d never be able to afford such purchases and, having once experienced such, would then forever long for those fragrances and flavors.
Thus, perhaps it is better to not expose myself - or is it more appropriate to go with the whole “better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all” thing?
Can someone check and see if a Curry House near them has closed. The rumor i’m hearing is that they just suddenly closed without telling the employees.
BTW that is also my FTC confession. I love Curry House, in high school we would go to LIttle Tokyo and eat there. We considered it fancy.
Also, assuming this photo is representative of the entire collection, you still have the whole world of Japanese and Chinese teas to look forward to exploring!
This place has been trending recently:https: //kettl.co/
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I know this won’t help with the nostalgia factor but maybe these guys swoop in and start expanding https://ichibanyausa.com/
Not based on the Brentwood (although I honestly don’t go enough to know if they have a ton of business). I also am not super fond of their curry and plating (although Curry House has/had fallen off so much that there’s parity btw the two, I think).
do you have a favorite Japanese style curry in town? There is plenty ‘OK’ Curry but not much to get excited about. Yakisoba is even harder to find. funny it’s not the fancy food i miss from japan mostly good everyday stuff
I haven’t been in some time but a lot of my friends and i used to go to Ducks off of Las Tunas in San Gabriel. I also remember Foo Foo Tei making their own Japanese curry from scratch.
I haven’t been to both places in quite some time.
No, but I also haven’t had a ton. And I don’t know if Japanese curry does much for my taste buds. Curry House, Hurry Curry, Coco Ichibanaya, Kimikatsu, and Blue Marlin (RIP) are the only ones I’ve ever had (at least more than once). And of those, I only know that Curry House and Blue Marlin had their own versions (I assume Hurry Curry does, as well, but I’m not sure about that). No bang-banging, which makes it hard to compare.
Kimikatsu is pretty good. I actually like(d) the gloppy richness of the Curry House one, although I think other people find that off-putting. My fondness of Curry House curry could also be b/c it was my first and the stuff I grew up with. I assume the supermarket stuff tastes the same as what you find/found in the restaurant.
Ichibanya has sometimes had a bit of a bitter flavor that I don’t like, although maybe that was at the slightly higher spice levels. I don’t recall the last order I got (which I think was the default spiciness level) having that same issue, but I went yrs btw orders.
Does Japanese curry taste much different in Japan? The stuff we have here doesn’t send me the way, say, Indian sauces do.
TBH, when I went to Curry House, I was more apt to order the meat-sauce spaghetti (which I ADORED)… and the tofu salad, but just for the miso dressing.
When tonkatsu is fried well (as it was at one place in the food court at the Torrance Mitsuwa… I think the place is gone, unfortunately), I actually don’t want the flakiness to be buried by much sauce (just a TINY amount of tonkatsu sauce will suffice).
my only concern is that you have 3 huge boxes of lipton, despite you being a tea enthusiast, lipton in tea bags might be the lowest common denominator when it comes to tea. i suggest that you try more loose leaf teas vs. the dust that gets packed into tea bags. it’ll be a lot more expensive, but worth it.
if you explore chinese teas, you might want to consider getting a thermometer - the temperature of the water makes a difference in the brew. water for white/green tea shouldn’t go above 185 degrees or so, while oolong should not be below 185. black/pu 'er - close to boiling.
infusion times also make a difference; first infusion - no more than 30 seconds. and some folks don’t even drink the first infusion. think of it like pre boiling pork bones to make the meat sweeter and discarding the cooking waer.
finally, water can make a difference as well. bottled is probably your best option.
and if you use a single cup tea infuser, you can appreciate how the tea changes from the first sip to the last sip.
having said all that, you may find you prefer a weak infusion of a lower grade tea to a “properly” infused higher grade tea. a chacon son gout.
I always bake from scratch but every once in a very rare while, I make cookies using the slice-and-bake rolls of refrigerated Pillsbury cookie dough. There’s just something really nostalgic to me about that commercial sugary taste. Makes me think of elementary school.
Sort of the same way I felt after Californios. Can’t imagine a better place to drop $300pp, but I’m not really sure if I want to drop $300pp at any place.
I also am not super fond of their curry and plating (although Curry House has/had fallen off so much that there’s parity btw the two, I think).
