This curry café in an old home
in Tokyo's Shitamachi area is never empty.
Open your eyes to the profound flavours of spiced cuisine
through their course-based menu.
Spice Café is located near the Jikken Bridge - a place with an excellent view of the Tokyo Skytree, and the 50-year-old wooden building housing the café is visited by food connoisseurs daily.
On offer is the spiced cuisine of world-traveller, owner and chef Kazushiro Ito. Of all the items on his menu, he is particularly well known for his excellent curries based in the cuisine of Southern India.
In contrast to thick North Indian curries, thinner, South Indian curries are an excellent match with rice - the staple food of the area. With an abundance of vegetables and beans, they are lower in fat and much easier to digest.
Ito offer course meals centred on the curries he learned in Southern India, but he also offers a great selection of other dishes that thoroughly satisfy his guests.
Course options are essentially fixed. If guests choose the vegetable platter, they enjoy a number of spiced dishes such as cumin-flavoured carrot salad or roast black caraway potatoes. For the main dish, diners can choose from among four standard curries available or two daily curries.
Guests become immersed in a multi-layered aroma of fresh spices.
Diners who have the room for it should order a side of biryani. Richly aromatic, high-quality basmati rice is topped with a variety of ingredients and then flavoured with saffron and other spices and steamed.
The dish is often eaten at weddings and other ceremonies in India, and the mellow aroma is one for diners to enjoy. However, it takes more than 30 minutes to cook, so guests should place their order soon after arriving.
