Conbini food review: Coco Ichiban cheese curry pan

I audibly gasped when I saw this on the shelf. I’ve been a fan and frequenter of Coco Ichibanya, one of Japan’s most iconic curry chains, for a long time now. To see they’ve come out with an official cheese curry pan is a very exciting prospect…

Now I looked everywhere on the packaging for heating instructions and was unable to find any. Nevertheless I decided to heat it in a microwave for a minute or so, because I know from experience that a cold curry pan is nothing to be desired.

A minute was perhaps too long. As taking my first bite resulted in burning the roof of my mouth. My advice: take a small nibble of the outside of any heated cheese and curry filled bread products you’re eating in the future. Don’t take an enormous bite straight into the middle and yelp out in pain like a snared animal.

Once the curry pan had cooled slightly I was able to enjoy its soft and pillowy bread outside. Pillowy doesn’t quite cut it. It was so soft and springy I thought it might bounce around in my stomach. In animated kids movies there’s sometimes a scene where a character lands on a cloud and bounces a little before settling down softly on its enveloping fluffiness. That’s what the bread was like.

The smell was very strong, arguably too strong but if you’re able to venture into a Coco Ichiban and appreciate the pungent curry smell that hangs in the air, you’ll be fine with this. The flavor was classic Coco curry. On the very mild side thankfully, as the spice levels in their restaurants are not for the faint-hearted.

The most hilarious part of this was the attempt to include some vegetables in the curry. If you stare hard enough at the picture you may just make out the tiny slithers of carrot. Why are they so small? Well I have a theory.

In Japanese, “day” looks like this 日 and “month” looks like this 月. As you can see, quite similar. My contention is that whoever was in charge of making the prototype pan at the Coco Ichiban Curry Creation Centre misread the recommended 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day as 5 servings per month. It is the only reasonable explanation that I can think of.

The only notably poor aspect of this curry pan was how badly it held its shape. Other curry pans I have enjoyed in the past have held their structure a lot more effectively and satisfyingly. This on the other hand flopped about limply and became somewhat harder to eat as a result.

Nevertheless, I heartily recommend this to anyone in Japan right now – I got it in a Family Mart by the way. Rating: 1st (degree burn on the roof of my mouth).