food

Curry for breakfast: Coco Ichibanya now has morning sets

18 Comments
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24

Breakfast is, nutritionally speaking, the most important meal of the day, and that goes double when you’re traveling. Your sightseeing itinerary might have you in places with limited healthy eating options, and so being able to start your day with some vegetables, especially at a reasonable price, can help offset a higher-calorie, more expensive meal later in the day.

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But while breakfast is a chance to eat healthy, it’s also a chance to eat curry, which is an opportunity you never really want to pass up. So we were happy to learn that Coco Ichibanya (aka Coco Ichi), Japan’s most popular curry restaurant chain, offers incredibly affordable, healthy morning curry sets.

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The breakfast curry sets are only offered at select locations, but thankfully for Tokyo the branches are in ultra-convenient neighborhoods, Shinjuku and Akihabara. We stopped by the Shinjuku Station West Exit Coco Ichi Branch, which offers five kinds of vegetable-focused “Vegetarian Curries” (although one definitely has some meat in it).

The least expensive is the super-affordable Morning Curry Set (414 yen), with the Morning Veggie Curry Set just a few yen more at 420 yen. Moving up from there brings you to the Morning Curry with Soft-Boiled Egg Set (486 yen), Morning Veggie Spinach Curry Set (523 yen), and finally the Morning Curry Sausage Set (533 yen), which still isn’t all that pricy, considering that each of the sets also gets you a salad and your choice of beverage (orange juice, hot or iced coffee, hot or cold cafe au lait, oolong tea, milk, or cola).

We settled on the Morning Veggie Curry Set, 150 grams (5.3 ounces) of rice with Coco Ichi’s delicious curry sauce poured over it, accompanied by sliced vegetables. While that makes for a lighter meal than a standard plate of Coco Ichi curry, it was still a satisfying portion size for the start of the day, especially when combined with the salad.

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In addition to giving your taste buds more stimulation than a bagel or yogurt, Coco Ichi also says that the presence of the spice cardamine in its curry helps dissolve drowsiness and get your brain out of sleep mode.

Right now, a total of eight Coco Ichibanya branches offer morning sets: Shinjuku Station West Exit and JR Akihabara Station Showadori Exit in Tokyo, Kita-ku Taiyuji in Osaka, Fukuoka Minmi Bypass, Hakata-ku Chikushi-dori, and Tobata 3 Bypass in Fukuoka, Expasa Ashigara Kudari in Shizuoka, and Chatan Kokutaidoro in Okinawa. The morning sets are available from 6 to 11 a.m. (except at Expasa Ashigara Kudari, which starts serving the, at 7), and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that their availability expands to other branches too, so that we never have to cook breakfast again.

Related: Coco Ichibanya location finder

Read more stories from SoraNews24.

-- Japan’s biggest curry chain now offers a true vegetarian curry

-- We try Denny’s Japan’s Massaman curry: The world’s most delicious food

-- Want everyone to lick their lips when they look at you? This curry shirt will have them drooling

© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

18 Comments
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I think I’ll stick with my banana and yoghurt.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

You've never tried curry until you've tried curry from Thailand and the Indian sub-continent. They have real flavour and aroma. One thing I worry about Japanese curry is what type of fat/oil is used. For non-vegetarian curry, I'm sure it's lard. For vegetarian, I sure hope it's not palm fat.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Never been tempted to try Japanese-style curry. 

It can range from great to pure industrial crap, depends where you have it. There are Mom and Pop stores that make it really good. The "coco first" is one of the worst, and it's not even the cheapest. Never got the appeal of that chain.

"Curry" has no fiber. Just water and curry powder.

It's normally a roux (fat plus flour).

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Japanese curry would never exist in a free and fair world.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

YUCK !!!!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Never got the appeal of that chain.

Agreed, it's foul and closer to pet food than it is to curry .Do they still do the curry challenge there? You used to be able to order a monstrous plate of the slop they serve, it was free if you finished it within 20 minutes. Weighed as much as a small Volvo. The walls were plastered with polaroids of petit Japanese girls smilingly showing off their empty plates.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Yeah, a vegetarian curry with sausages!

Last winter they had a wonderful vegetarian curry soup, in addition to the usual vegetarian curry. The promotion was over by February - I thought I'd just have the usual vegetarian curry - and found even that had gone. I got up and left without ordering anything. Thanks a bunch.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Curry is nasty as a breakfast. Too heavy and smelly.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Never been tempted to try Japanese-style curry.

It’s not bad. Cheap and cheerful.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Better than salad for breakfast like a lot of Japanese restaurants serve, lol.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I love Japanese curry. Especially "mild". (I'm quite the wuss.)

But, not for breakfast. Nnnnnnnope.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Years ago when I lived in Ushihama, Japan I would frequently go to a local market and get a piece or two of curry-pan for breakfast. Delicious and satisfying, ♥

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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