The charms of curry rice are as multivarious as the dish itself, but first on the list might be how purely comforting it is. On one side of the bowl sits the stew: a pool of velvety brown gravy as deeply savory as it is fragrantly spiced, enveloping chunks of tender meat and vegetables. On the other, a generous mound of steamed rice: utterly neutral, gently chewy grains that both soak up some of the gravy and offer a palate-cleansing respite from it.
That split-screen plating is intentional for eating purposes and serves as a reminder that curry rice, or kare raisu, is one of the great mergers between Japanese and Western cooking and a prime example of yoshoku (Japanese foods inspired by the West). Japan adopted curry from the British when the archipelago emerged from isolation during the late 19th-century Meiji Restoration, associating the spiced stew’s well-balanced nutrition and resourceful approach to stretching meat and vegetables with the modern West. (Of course, British curry itself was an adaptation of the richly spiced stews British colonizers experienced in South Asia.)
Like many Western stews, curry rice is made by cooking meat and vegetables in a gravy thickened by a roux, in this case seasoned with Japanese
