Magic Spice Shimokitazawa shop

Lots of hype around this place so I had to check it myself. It took about 15 minutes of waiting outside on a weekday followed by a 45 minutes long wait for my food to come since the place was packed. If you don't like waiting this place is probably not for you.

To make things easier here is the system:

You pick a curry type from: chicken, hamburger, momo, keema, veggie bean, pork kakuni, beef, seafood, veggie mushroom and special seafood.

Then you pick the base: chicken or tomato "genki" curry (plus 121 yen)

Then you pick for spiciness level with each level more expensive than the previous one: there are 7 levels with the top one (Aumair 虚空) being the most spicy (plus 297 yen). Nirvana (涅槃 the forth from the top, is considered the house recommendation, +220 yen).

Then you can add toppings from a very long list: rolled cabbage, fried tofu, momo, cheese, fried chicken etc. etc. Each one for a different price.

The soup is thin in my humble opinion and the entire dish is way below many other soup curry places in Shimokitazawa. The momo reminded me of gyoza and not of the real thing and all the rest of the ingredients were pretty avarage. I'm really sorry to write this since I was really expecting to eat in this place but it's just ok.

One thing is that the options in this place are many. You can basically have hundreds of different combinations, toppings etc. soaybe there are other things to be had.

The interior design here is extremely tacky and reminiscent of a very touristy place in India. But still, seating is nice and comfortable and you might feel for a second you're a backpacker in India/Nepal/Indonesia again (unless you are from one of these countries, in which case you should write a review!).

Overall, disappointment. It's better to pick one of the other soup curry places in Shimo... Seeing the long line as I left made my heart sink a bit.