In the early years of this century, not long after I ate my first “sushi” (M&S vegetarian selection, since you ask), I tried my first katsu curry at a cool London noodle bar, with my cool new university friends, one of whom had been banging on about this Wagamama place since freshers’ week. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I found that the thick, brown gravy dolloped over neat slices of breaded chicken reminded me of nothing more than good old chip shop curry sauce.
Of course, I didn’t mention this at the time, for fear of ridicule – it wasn’t until many years later that I found out this was no mere coincidence. As Japanese chef and author Hiroko Shimbo explains, “Indian curry came to Japan from England”, via the Royal Navy, when the country first opened up to foreign trade in the second half of the 19th century. After adoption by the Japanese armed forces, it became more widely popular as an example of yōshoku, or western food.
