A note on the words: oufuu curry is the Japanese-European style — a dark, slow-built roux, sweeter and thicker than an Indian curry, served over rice on a plate. Gavial has been topping up the same sauce since 1982.
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Gavial on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Drinkers, thank you for waiting. It is Hangover Meshi time.
To Jimbocho today — because yesterday’s hangover left me desperate for curry. The target is Gavial, right by Jimbocho station. It is always in my line of sight and I had never eaten there. I reckoned that for a hangover, a sweeter European-style curry beats an Indian one.
Since 1982. Forty-four years.
Cash only, so be warned. I arrived around 19:00, I think. It was fairly quiet and I walked straight in. I had the impression it was always packed, but perhaps not on a weekday.
Gavial has not changed its method since it opened in 1982, and it has been topping up the same sauce since then as well. Remarkable. The sauce is an obsession: a great pot of onions boiled over a whole day, then a paste of ginger, carrot, celery and spices fried in butter for twelve hours, combined into the continuously topped-up sauce and finely adjusted to the weather and the season. A roux blended from twenty-eight spices — very much looking forward to this.
And then the question of what to have with that sauce. Agonising. First, broadly: meat or seafood? Seafood, I think. And in the end I chose the seafood curry.
You choose the heat, too: children’s, mild, medium or hot. A household “hot” is apparently Gavial’s medium, so I asked for hot. And you can have up to two potatoes.
Now, I came here to cure a hangover, but while waiting for curry there is only one thing to do.
Rakkyo shallots and fukujinzuke pickles on the table. I will add them later.
And here we are. I asked for less rice.
That looks good.
The presentation is charming: a white porcelain pot, a branded rice plate with cheese scattered over it, and a small dish of skin-on potato with butter. That trio raises the spirits.
Inside the pot, a deep red-brown roux, thick and glossy. White cream swirls through it and the fragrance of the spices lifts. Tasting a little of the roux: the first note is a mellow, fruit-like sweetness. Then the complex spicing raises the heat gradually — sweet and yet hot, the two-stage construction that only a European-style curry gives you. That sweetness wraps gently around a hungover stomach.
Over the rice, then.
The filling is springy prawns and small shellfish, tumbling over each other. Genuinely generous. Every bite dissolves the sweetness of the prawn and the savour of the shellfish into the roux, and the sense of the sea deepens mouthful by mouthful. Presumably it is the weight of a sauce topped up since 1982 — the depth of it is extraordinary. The lightness of the seafood against the heft of the aged roux: that contrast is hard to beat.
The cheese hidden in the rice does good work too. Scoop it up along with the roux once the heat has softened it and a milky roundness lays another layer over the depth.
And the famous skin-on potato. I put butter on it, broke it up, and ate it in floury mouthfuls between spoons of curry. Towards the end I sank it into the roux and ate it base and all.
By the time I finished, a pleasant heat had brought a faint sweat to my forehead.
Perfect for a hangover. Very good.
A very good European-style curry, and my stomach made a full recovery. I really do think European-style curry suits a hangover. The layered spicing, the well-judged sweetness, a clear heat and all that seafood are hard to beat. My enthusiasm for curry is rising again. Perhaps I should start a tour of curries for hangover days. Delicious — recommended.
May you meet something good to eat today too.
Gavial (curry / Jimbocho Station, Takebashi Station, Kudanshita Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★★☆ 4.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.