Spark Soup Curry
Add: E7 2F Peace Plaza, Shuicheng Lu 18 / 水城路18号和平广场2楼 E7
Tel: 6295 6523
Hours: 11:00am-01:00am
Price: 70RMB/person
Visited: Jan 2011
Soup curry specialty restaurant opened by a Sapporo (Hokkaido, Japan) native, who won ten million yen in a national competition which helped him open his first non-Japan branch in Shanghai. It was a full house when I went on a Saturday, filled with mostly Japanese patrons.
The menu is self-explanatory. Pick the curry, choose the spiciness level, the amount of rice, and any additional toppings you’d like. I picked level 3 for spiciness and it was barely (if at all) spicy. There’s also a jug of chili oil on the table for those needing a heavier dose.
Typical Japanese curry is fairly thick as it uses a roux base that includes fried flour, but soup curry is thin and accented with heavy spices. We tried the chicken vegetable soup curry (68 RMB), which had a little bit of everything in it – lotus root, pumpkin, broccoli, onions, bell peppers, etc., plus a chicken leg. The chicken itself was rather bland, but the soup – stewed for 8 hours with 32 different spices – was excellent. It was thin, light, but very flavorful, perfect with a bowl of rice.
We also tried the omu-raisu (omelet rice) in white sauce (63 RMB), which was quite delicious as well. The egg is half cooked and snugly drapes over a sizable scoop of white rice, accompanied by a creamy white sauce.
Though it’s on the expensive side for curry, Spark is in a category of its own and worthy of a try, and may be especially appropriate for those on a diet but have an irresistible craving for curry.
