[/floatl]Press Trust of India: In Japan, India is virtually synonymous with 'curry'.
Indian food has now got the Japanese hooked and is gradually replacing Chinese and Thai, their other favourites, with hundreds of restaurants mushrooming across its islands and an unprecedented rise in food imports from the country. In fact, the Japanese are so fascinated with the 'Indian' food that even restaurants owned by Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans display the Indian tricolour and add the prefix 'Indian' to the names of the eateries. So you have restaurant chains like the Siddique's 'Indian Pakistani', which has over 20 outlets and 'Indian Sri Lankan'. "The Japanese identify 'Indian' with good and delicious food. If a restaurant serving any South Asian fare does not have the Indian tag, the Japanese will not go to it," says Mohammad Sageer, a chef working for Potahar who came from Islamabad Pakistan eight years ago. There are others like the Maharaja which has 25 restaurants, Khana (3), Sapla (1), Great India, Bombay, Ali Baba, Jantar Mantar and Agra. There is also a restaurant named 'Gandhi' in Washington Hotel in Shinzuku that was set up 25 years ago by a Japanese. Potahar, in Shinzuku, Tokyo, is owned by a Pakistani but the Indian flag hangs outside. A small eatery with hardly a sitting place for a dozen people, it caters to over 100 people, mostly Japanese, who queue up for "curry and nan" in just two hours during lunch time.
I recall having a conversation with Captain Japan when we wondered whether the fastest-growing restaurant segment in Japan over recent years might be Indian cuisine. I thought there was a good chance because of the increasing Indian population. They have also escaped relatively free from the food poisoning, tainted ingredients and mislabelling scandals which have affected Japanese, Chinese and Korean yakiniku restaurants. Many offer good value all-you-can-eat deals and a number of city centre restaurants stay open until the early hours. This makes them competitive with family restaurants who are currently retrenching. I don't think this trend includes Japanese-style curry. Partly because it is difficult to distinguish it separately since it is ubiquitous in meals like katsu kare, but mostly because beef curry is one of its mainstays and you won't find that on Indian menus. When the mad cow scare was at is peak, Japanese curry chains like Coco suffered just as much as the gyudon chains like Yoshinoya.
