The real attraction, thought, is most definitely its cafeteria. Pack into the shuttle bus at Port Authority and endure the bumpy and sometimes lengthy ride to Edgewater, NJ, and you'll find a cafeteria full of authentic Japanese cuisine from ramen to beef bowls. There's one exception: curry. But, as I discovered during one random Wednesday excursion, that curry can be found in one of the store's food vendors, Kayaba.

The Kayaba weekday curry special is just six dollars, considerably less than the going rate in the city. Your six bucks get you a ridiculously gigantic plate filled to the brim with curry and rice, considerably more than what those aforementioned establishments will offer. There are no toppings to choose from -- sorry, breaded pork cutlet fans -- but it doesn't matter, since what's provided is more than enough and then some. Aside from the gigantic portion, one will find huge chunks of potato and carrots in the mix, and meat lovers will be happy to know that nice cuts of chicken are also part of the roux as well. As for the sauce itself, one will instantly fall in love with the sweet flavoring, nice and smooth with a hint of honey.

Initially, one will simply have a ball with the pure spectacle of it all, but halfway through is when reality settles in. As pleasant as the sauce is, it's also on the thin side: I don't want to use the term "watery," since it's not that bad, but it's still easily the thinnest sauce I've personally encountered. The roux is very much on the mild side and there's no way to bump up the spiciness. You may find yourself struggling to finish the plate, not just due to the volume of food but the fact that it's just boring.

Still, Kayaba's curry has value. It's sort of like what you'd find at an all night curry house in Tokyo near a train station... just not one of the best ones. Still, definitely worth a shot, at least once. Just save yourself some room for Mitsuwa's array of fine desserts..

One such place is Sushi Ariyoshi, near Union Square. It's a fairly nice, almost upscale sushi joint that's reminiscent of what you'll find in the metropolitan parts of Japan, offering a multitude of sushi, yakitori, and udon dishes. The curry plates are only on the lunch menu, but if you ask for one in the evening, the chef will make it -- provided you pay an extra $2. This is a considerable sting given that the lunch prices are already a bit on the high side, from $8.50 to $10.50.

You do get a tremendous amount of food in return. The amount of curry and rice on Ariyoshi's plates is practically ridiculous, so come only if you have a completely empty stomach. You'll also find a decent handful of options. While most places only have one curry sauce, at Sushi Ariyoshi the vegetable, chicken, beef, and seafood curries have their core ingredients simmered for almost an entire day, giving each a completely unique flavoring.

You can't adjust the spice levels of each, but their beef curry is spicier and hotter than the chicken. But it's mostly on the mild side right across the board. (The only one I can't personally vouch for is the seafood sauce, which apparently features sushi-quality shrimp, scallops and squid, because I'm allergic.)

As for the curry roux itself, it's simply phenomenal: thick and rich, thanks to the prolonged cooking period, and a bit on the sweet side. I hear milk and apple are key ingredients, but I definitely detected a hint of honey during my various taste tests. Even in the non-veggie plates, there are nice thick chunks of carrots. And the ratio of sauce to rice is absolutely perfect.

When it comes to toppings, only two options are available, which is where Sushi Ariyoshi falters. The chicken katsu was fine enough, but the pork I had was a total train wreck. Maybe I got a bad cut, but it was extremely dry and filled with nothing but fatty tissue. It was enough to almost singlehandedly ruin the entire meal. Otherwise, Ariyoshi was a fine dining experience -- just avoid the toppings like the plague. Even the chicken, which wasn't bad, wasn't worth the added cost on top of an already expensive plate of curry and rice.

On the one hand, this may be because I waited so long to write this review -- we were in LA for E3, you see, and it's always quite busy. But on the other hand, it's also probably because Hurry Curry was so completely unmemorable. If I was served this curry at a regular old Japanese restaurant, I might have been pleasantly surprised. But because it's a place that specializes in Japanese curry, Hurry Curry was more of a letdown.

My katsu curry was pretty straightforward, the roux served in a small bowl alongside my cutlet and rice. I traded my friend Christian a piece of my pork for a piece of his chicken and immediately regretted it; while the pork was okay, I found the chicken to be dry and not especially tasty.

Hurry Curry's sauce was alright, easily the best part of the meal. Christian recommended the spinach and mushroom topping (pictured above), which is mixed in with the sauce and adds some pretty delicious vegetable flavors and textures to the whole deal.

Hurry Curry does score some points for including a wide variety of toppings, including some I'd never seen on another curry place's menu, even in Japan. Fish katsu? That sounds interesting. (But why no cheese?)

I wanted to like Hurry Curry a lot more than I did. It's got a great name. The staff wear T-shirts that say "I [heart] Curry." How awesome is that? We at Americurry also [heart] curry. But while Hurry Curry isn't a bad deal, there's a Curry House right across the street, which is right where I'd go, next time.

One such chain is Wako, and it has a few locations in Los Angeles. The katsu is excellent, but the reason we're writing about it is because if you like, you can get curry sauce poured on top of your fried pork. Although Wako's curry sauce isn't amazing in and of itself, the whole dish was put together so well that I can't help but give it high marks.

Serving curry sauce at the proper temperature is key to the experience; lukewarm curry is gross. Wako's was warm and satisfying, poured liberally over the large katsu and big portion of rice. While many places are stingy with their curry (regardless of its quality), there was more than enough to go around at Wako.

Fresh shredded cabbage is typically served alongside katsu, and sometimes with curry (cf. Go Go). That Wako's curry is accompanied by a big pile of cabbage is not lost on the traditionalist in me, although I was disappointed that it was coated in lots of sticky sweet yellow-colored dressing. (If I go back, I'll ask them to leave it off.)

But what really makes Wako's curry shine is, of course, the katsu. It's giant. It's breaded with excellent panko. It makes up for any other deficiencies. If your favorite part of katsu curry is the katsu, Wako's might be exactly what you need.

And then there's this absurdity above. In addition to a whole variety of your typical fried objects, Wako also features "cheese katsu." It's a thin slice of pork wrapped around a mound of gooey orange and white cheeses, which is all breaded, fried, and sliced so that the cheese runs out and begins to congeal. It is remarkably delicious; it is also remarkable that I and my dining companions are still alive to tell you of its glory.

The menu doesn't feature cheese katsu curry, although you might try special-ordering it and see what happens.

Like all restaurants that have curry on the menu but don't specialize in it, customization options are thin on the ground at Wako. You can't pick a spiciness level, and I found that their curry is actually quite spicy. My aforementioned dining companions pointed out that Wako's locations are in Koreatown, and that Korea in general likes things much spicier than Japan. Fair enough. (Indeed, the menu is written in Korean and English but not Japanese.)

Slightly harder to wrap my head around: The only spoons that they gave us were those oddly-shaped lacquerware spoons that are used for miso soup.

Regardless, if you live in Los Angeles, are a curry addict, and are getting a little tired of going to Curry House or Hurry Curry every time you need a fix, you might try Wako's take.

The best you could hope for with "restaurant curry" is that it would be unobjectionable. It would never be in the same league as Go Go or CoCo.

On a recent all-day excursion to Japantown -- we're pretty much seeing every movie at the luxurious Sundance Kabuki, these days -- Karen and I tried the curry rice at two different places we'd never been to before: Bushi-Tei Bistro and Sanppo Sushi.

Bushi-Tei Bistro is a recently-opened sister restaurant to Bushi-Tei, the Michelin star-rated fine dining French/California fusion restaurant up the street. The casual bistro features a wholly different menu, mostly made up of rice and pasta dishes borrowing from Japanese and Italian cuisine.

We'd hoped the restaurant's high standards would carry over and create something more than the usual lunch-counter curry, but they did not. The best thing about the pork katsu curry ($12.80) is that it is topped with a kurobuta pork cutlet, thick, juicy, and perfectly fried. Unfortunately, the curry sauce itself was way too salty, making the whole dish disappointing.

You can also get your curry plain, or topped with two large fried shrimp. But as appetizing as it looks on the picture-menu outside the restaurant, we weren't impressed at all with the final product. (Not to mention the fact that it took a really long time.)

Sanppo Sushi's curry was similar -- no frills, just rice, sauce, katsu, deep red fukujinzuke pickles, and a couple of cocktail onions. (Does anyone actually eat those...?) It was served, hilariously, in a gigantic deep ramen bowl, which made eating it a bit awkward.

But the sauce, for restaurant curry, was actually pretty good -- even though the thin, dark-meat katsu was a disappointment, especially after Bushi-Tei's kurobuta. I'm usually opposed on principle to giant chunks of vegetable in my curry -- especially when it's something like Manpuku where you can't find the curry for all the potatoes. But Sanppo's chunks of stewed carrot were small enough and well-cooked enough that it didn't bother me.

We did make an interesting discovery, though. I noticed that the menu listed "beef curry" and "katsu curry," both priced at $10. I got the katsu, and Karen's husband Patrick ordered the beef curry. But I noticed that my curry also had chunks of beef in the sauce, and I didn't see any difference between mine and his. So if you order "beef curry" at Sanppo, you're getting ripped off -- it's katsu curry, with no katsu, for the same price.

If all I had ever eaten was "restaurant curry," I'd be of the opinion that Japanese curry is an interesting, though ultimately underwhelming, food. I wouldn't understand its greatness, and we certainly wouldn't have started a website about it. Sadly, this is often the only option for anyone looking to try Japanese curry in America. I don't think I'd order the curry at either place again, although Sanppo's gets the edge in this impromptu battle.

Imagine my shock and dismay when I finally made it back there the other day and found out that Rai Rai Ken had taken curry off the menu. Thankfully, my shock turned to pleasant surprise when I was directed next door to its new sister restaurant: Curry-Ya.

I love Curry-Ya's ambience. Countless noodle shops try to look like the stereotypical rustic ramen shack out of Tampopo, but I think this approach appeals mostly to NYU students looking to get a "traditional" Japanese lunch. It's a breath of fresh air to see a Japanese joint in the U.S. that looks and feels contemporary -- similar to the numerous 24-hour fast food curry shops that crowd around Tokyo's train stations. There's just one long counter plus a small space behind the front window for eating. During the day, it's a great place to have a nice, quiet meal, but at night, when the college kids fill the joint, it can become quite maddening and downright annoying.

But let's get down to business: How's the curry? The sauce is pretty damn delicious. It's no-frills and no-nonsense, an excellent textbook example of why Japanese curry is amazing. It's of perfect thickness, never watery. Each spice is distinct and complimentary to the others. Unfortunately, near-perfection comes at a somewhat hefty price: The original plain curry will cost you $7, which is not too bad, but the toppings add between $6-8 per plate. Yikes.

The Berkshire pork cutlet (pictured) is fairly fantastic, with some of the best breading I've tasted on this side of the Pacific. But it is it worth eight extra dollars? It's worth a try at least once, at the very least. For me, though, the cheapest topping is the best: the simple hamburger steak, a nice thick meat patty that's fried over a flame and finished in an oven, to avoid drying it out. (For $5, it had better be perfect.)

The curry isn't put directly on your plate: It's served on the side, in a small hot bowl, so it's piping hot when you pour it into the volcano-shaped lump of rice on your plate. When your plate is served to you, it's just the rice and whatever topping you ordered, along with a few green beans and plums on the side as garnish. The amount of rice I was given on two subsequent trips was inconsistent: It seems to range between "just enough" and "too little." If you enjoy drinking curry by itself, as if it was some kind of extremely rich soup, then this might be the place for you.

There's not much else to speak of regarding the rest of the menu -- there are a few side salads, the usual assortment of American soft drinks, one token Japanese soda, and Japanese booze. Like most eating establishments in New York City, Curry-Ya gets right to the point. It's no Go Go Curry, but what really is? If you find yourself in the Village, Curry-Ya is a solid alternative.

For readers of Americurry, it is not enough to take as given Ōtisu's First Axiom ("Curry is the best of all possible foods.") Our stomachs might be full and content, but our heads will be dull and empty. No, to find true curry happiness, we must look beyond the perfection of Japanese curry, past even the glory of the Threefold Toppings¹, to that oft-overlooked foundation stone of the curry plate: the starches.

Far more than the mere "glue" holding the curry together on your spoon, the right rice or bread can make or break a curry dish. One only has to visualize Japanese curry over a long-grained basmati or Uncle Ben's Instant to realize how much rice can add or detract from the enjoyment of curry. For the curry aficionado willing to venture slightly further afield, the popular Curry House restaurant chain offers two unique presentations.

The first, Grilled-Stone Curry (pictured top), takes its name from the searingly hot stone bowl in which it's served. A bed of rice is covered in various vegetables: corn, green beans, mushrooms, carrots, and sprouts, plus your choice of pork katsu, eel, seafood, or rib eye steak. Once the stone bowl is brought to your table, the curry sauce is poured on and the contents mixed. After a few minutes of cooking right there at your table, it's ready to enjoy.

Given the just-in-time grilling, Grilled-Stone Curry is incredibly hot -- and incredibly delicious. When lukewarm rice and tepid curry mar so many American curry plates, it's great to experience a piping hot platter. Even better is the way the stone bowl chars the bottom layer of rice, creating a crispy, crunchy shell that perfectly offsets the curry's sweet spiciness.

So what's the downside? Curry House's somewhat stingy rice-to-curry ratio can result in a dish that resembles a curried rice pilaf than, well, curry rice. Upsize your curry and maximize your enjoyment.

Another delicious option is Curry-Pan: curry-filled bread. It's a staple in Japanese school lunchrooms, and this is an excellent example. The bread has a crispy, fried exterior and doughy, spongy inside: thick enough to support the curry inside, but not so thick that all you get is a mouthful of bread. The curry filling is actual curry, a major step up from the paste-like "astronaut curry" most often used as filling. A bit more filling would be perfection, but then again, what empty space wouldn't be improved by filling it with curry?

Curry-Pan takes 20 minutes to make, so order as soon as you arrive.

Are either of these dishes superior to traditional curry? Probably not. But with two more ways to enjoy this best of all possible foods, why not stop by a nearby Curry House and judge for yourself?

¹Pork katsu, sausage, and cheese.

As you might imagine for a 25-year-old chain that specializes in one dish, Curry House's curry sauce is very good: deep brown in color, sweet, and warm. It's not the very best in the Bay -- truth be told, in a NorCal roux showdown, I'd give the edge to Muracci's. Curry House, though, would be running a close second.

What makes Curry House stand out from the rest is its staggering array of toppings and other customization options. Customization is one of the best things about Japanese curry places, and it's something that American restaurants that offer only one topping and one spiciness level simply can't deliver. At Curry House, you can pick from three spice levels, then add a wide variety of toppings to your curry. There's the usual pork katsu and fried shrimp, yes. But there's also beef katsu. Onion rings. Or menchi katsu, a fried hamburger steak.

Since we had three people on our excursion to Cupertino, we tried a wide variety of toppings. The pork katsu turned out to be the best -- a little tough, but tasty. The chicken katsu was on the thin side and had kind of a cheap, off taste. The menchi katsu was somewhere in the middle: nothing to write home about, but how many complaints can you really make about a fried hamburger?

Although the food was laid out on our plates very nicely, Curry House doesn't really balance its sauce and rice well -- we ran out of curry while there was still a big pile of white rice left on our plates. If you hate when this happens, too, the best thing to do is to make your plate a Large size. For $1.50 more you get some more rice and an extra bowl of curry on the side.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention several of Curry House's other curry-related menu items, none of which we tried. There's "stone bowl curry," only available at dinner, served in a sizzling ceramic dish. "Curry soup udon" is a curry-flavored broth served over noodles. Also, you can get your curry served over brown rice, pilaf, or spaghetti if you want.

Curry House definitely has its share of minor issues, but if you're a Japanese curry junkie looking for a fix, it'll get you through the day. Cupertino is a long, long haul from San Francisco, however, so don't expect to be able to stop in if you're vacationing here without renting a car and blocking off the whole afternoon.

Eating at Manpuku is slightly chaotic. But surely all of these Berkeley students couldn't be wrong… right? Oh, but they could be. Well, not "wrong," because their criteria were different from ours. We were looking for good food; they were looking for cheap food.

And Manpuku is, if nothing else, really really cheap. The most expensive thing on the menu was 12 bucks, and that was for a giant bento box filled with beef teriyaki and tempura. Most everything else could be had for half that, including the katsu curry ($6.50).

It looked positively huge when they set it in front of me, although that could have been an optical illusion brought on by the miniature table for four. I'm not going to mince words: Manpuku's curry tasted very, very bad. It was lukewarm and got cold fast. The sauce was flavorless. Usually I use the red fukujinzuke pickles sparingly, because their sweet flavor can distract from the flavor of the curry. At Manpuku I wished I'd had another pile of them, because I needed distraction.

The breading was falling off the katsu, exposing the thin slice of pork inside. And while I don't necessarily object to a couple of slices of potato or carrot in my curry, Manpuku's is so filled with them that it's like eating a coal miner's stew -- all you can taste are boiled vegetables.

We shan't be imposing on Berkeley's broke freshman class again; they can have their super-cheap sushi and sad, sad curry all to themselves.

is likely to be the first thing a curry fan will exclaim at being served the katsu curry plate at On the Bridge, a small, popular eatery in San Francisco's Japantown.

There are, in fact, some people who love having their curry topped with fried eggs, as evidenced by the fact that the topping is available in Japan's CoCo Ichibanya curry chain. But getting surprised with a massive topping that's not on the menu, especially if you don't like fried eggs, is a scary experience. My katsu curry at On the Bridge even had diced tomatoes and grated Parmesean cheese on it, for some reason.

Why all the surprise bizarro toppings? Well, it's because On the Bridge specializes in what it calls yoshokuya dishes, which is Japanese for "Western style." It's fusion cuisine that combines Eastern and Western flavors. So you can get all manner of pasta with Japanese toppings, or curry with "American" toppings that you'd find on a pizza. (And yes, they do in fact serve curry pizza.)

But whereas most fusion food consists of flavors from different cuisines delicately stitched together, On the Bridge's fusion is the equivalent of a train full of Japanese food and a train full of American food smashing together in a full-speed head-on collision. Pick up the wreckage and you'll have their katsu curry. It is, to understate the case, an inelegant combination.

And yet I can't totally dismiss On the Bridge's food. On the one hand, I love curry places that offer a lot of customization options, and On the Bridge has the most of any San Francisco place I've ever seen. You can start with a basic curry plate for about $6, then choose from a large menu of different toppings to add to it, including tons of different vegetables. You can pick from six different spiciness levels.

Oddly enough, if you want katsu, and of course you do, you need to look elsewhere on the overly complicated menu. Way down the list, in the "Over Rice" section, it lists "Katsu Curry Don." They even have beef katsu, which I've rarely seen outside Japan. I ordered the pork Katsu Curry Don ($10.25) with shredded cheese.

You know what happened next. I had to push a fried egg off my plate. The cheese was served in a little separate dish, and I put it right on the curry, which had been liberated from its egg-based torment. The curry sauce was quite warm, and the cheese immediately began to melt in. I have to say, once I got past the egg, the dish was piping hot and good -- it felt like serious comfort food. The little tomato pieces didn't change the flavor that much, but the Parmesan made it taste weird. At least they sprinkled it off to the side instead of all over the curry sauce.

The curry sauce itself was decent, albeit with kind of an off taste to it -- although that might have been because of the other ingredients. There wasn't a lot of sauce: just enough to cover the katsu, leaving all the rice underneath white and bare.

If you're in Japantown and you want to stop by On the Bridge -- and you might be tempted, since it's a charming little place with Studio Ghibli anime playing on the three TV sets and shelves full of manga for you to read while you eat -- try the katsu curry, but remember to ask them to leave off the fried egg, tomatoes, and grated cheese if you don't want them.