Manpuku, located right down College Avenue walking south from Berkeley's university campus, was packed full of people when we went. It was packed so full of people that the restaurant's bewildered staff didn't quite know what to do with them all. You had to order food before you could get a table, you see. And they had actually finished some of our food and had it up on the counter before we could even sit down.

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.