la.foodblogging

On Sawtelle in West LA there are two opposing Japanese Curry joints, Hurry Curry of Tokyoand Curry House. Hurry Curry was the first place where I was introduced to the joy of curry sauce poured over spaghetti. Curry House offers the same dish of various curry concoctions that are served in a bowl to be ladeled over noodles by the diner.

To make a fair comparison, I ordered essentially the same dish at each restaurant, chicken katsu (breaded cutlet) with spicy curry over spaghetti. The presentation at both places is similar, a plate of unsauced spaghetti served with a bowl of steaming curry roux on the side. The presentation at Hurry Curry tends to be a bit nicer, with some extra veggies on the noodles and the chicken is cut into pieces and placed around the rim of the plate.

When you order your curry, you are asked what level of spice you would like, from mild to spicy. Neither Hurry Curry or Curry House offer anything close to the spice packed in Indian curries. Curry House can barely call even their hottest curry “spicy”, it is very mild. Hurry Curry does have a subtle spice to their curry, but if you’re looking for heat, you really have to ask them to crank it up.

Both places serve standard Japanese beers and Hurry Curry serves some creative sake drinks if you are interested in that type of coctail. I tend to think that Sapporo and curry were meant for each other, so I do not stray from that combo.

Parking on Sawtelle is typically tight. The small center that Hurry Curry is in has complimentary valet parking (they just ask for tips) and in Curry House’s building there is underground parking, which sometimes they charge for and sometimes they don’t.

For larger parties, Curry House is more accomodating, the restaurant is bigger and they have some larger tables. Hurry Curry is smaller and they are willing to move tables to seat larger parties. Overall service I have found to be better at Hurry Curry, with friendlier and more attentive servers.

In the end, I tip the scale towards Hurry Curry. The prices are nearly identical between the two, the menus are similar, but I like the quality of the food and service better at Hurry Curry.

Hurry Curry
2131 Sawtelle Blvd.
West Los Angeles
California 90025

Curry House
2130 S. Sawtelle Blvd. #200
Los Angeles, CA 90025
tel. (310) 479-8477

(you can see from the addresses how close the two are)

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.