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.

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.

Original review 4.13.09: As only the second restaurant in San Francisco to focus entirely on serving Japanese curry, Volcano is on the front lines of promoting this most perfect of foods in America. Sadly, it's not pulling its weight: Volcano's curry is indeed better than most SF eateries' take on the dish, but it's still miles away from what you can get on any street corner in Tokyo.

The Geary corridor in San Francisco's Outer Richmond district is densely packed with ethnic restaurants of every persuasion, including many popular Japanese restaurants like Kitaro and Genki Ramen. Few of these serve curry, however. The sushi place on 22nd, now called Little Tokyo, used to feature a big hot plate of very good katsu curry, but hasn't had it on the menu in years.

Enter Volcano. Actually, it used to be called Hana Sushi Bang, and was just another one of the many, many sushi bars that dotted Geary. One quick makeover later, and they're serving up the hottest new Japanese food craze to hit America. But they're not doing it especially well. Volcano does get points for being the only curry joint in San Francisco to offer such classic toppings as cheese and sausage, and for being the only one open on weekends. Unfortunately, the curry itself is sub-par, and the presentation is…

…well, it's quite a mess, isn't it? Compare the image above to Muracci's elegant presentation and ovular bowl. Volcano's chefs just throw everything haphazardly onto a paper plate, and devil may care where the pieces fall. Curry, katsu, rice all mixed up, random pieces of carrot, boiled potato with skin, and grilled zucchini under the rice, under the katsu, under the cheese. Cheese on the katsu, not in the curry where it's supposed to go. Pickles dropped anywhere. A golf ball of a cocktail onion.

The curry sauce tastes better than the average restaurant curry, but is a bit runny and thin. Hilariously, I was given a plastic fork and knife with which to eat this soupy brown sauce. Yes, you can in fact pick up some curries with a fork. Volcano's is not one of them.

Japan is a country obsessed with wrapping and presentation. Volcano's curry would benefit from a little bit more attention paid to the composition of the plate -- ditching the plastic and paper for real silverware and table settings would be a start, followed by putting everything in its proper place instead of throwing it all into a ridiculous pile.

San Francisco's Ferry Building is hard to miss if you're downtown -- just look down Market Street towards the bay, and you'll see its clock tower pointing towards the sky. Inside is one of the city's favorite tourist spots, a collection of gourmet specialty food shops, wine bars and light eateries.

One of them is Delica rf-1, a "Japanese delicatessen." What is a Japanese delicatessen, anyway? Beats me, but what's on offer here is a somewhat pricey selection of light, fresh soups, salads, and bite-sized fried foods, all influenced by Japanese cuisine but decidedly Californian in their execution -- note the steak nigiri sushi made with hormone-free Meyer Ranch beef, or the vegan asparagus salad.

Anyway, we're here for the curry. As of this writing, Delica offered two different sauces, made with lamb and shrimp. If you're in love with the tastes of either of these two animals, you're in luck. If you prefer your curry pure, no dice. The taste of lamb or seafood permeates both sauces. When it was clear I was having trouble choosing, they offered me generous sample tastes of both.

I went with the lamb, and it was a gamy kind of curry that I hadn't tasted ever since the first and last time I tried Indian lamb curry, at an international food fair in the 8th grade. (To its credit, Delica's version did not take its horrific revenge on me later that evening.) It was actually pretty good -- so hot that copious amounts of steam rose out of the takeout bowl that all Delica's food is served in, and very flavorful.

It's just not Japanese curry as we understand it. Delica, of course, doesn't offer varying spiciness levels, or toppings. However, if you want to fake it, I recommend buying a few of their aforementioned bite-sized fried foods. Illustrated in the bowl of curry above, left to right, are their miniature tonkatsu with house-made sauce ($1.50), sweet and spicy chicken karaage ($1.50), and their creamy, delicious potato croquette made with Russet and Yukon Gold and sauteed onions ($1.75).

Of course, added to their already-expensive curry bowls ($8.50 for small, pictured, and $10 for large), eating katsu curry at Delica rf-1 could get expensive.