CoCo Ichibanya, the largest chain of curry houses in Japan, is opening its first London restaurant this week.
The hugely popular curry and rice restaurant, which has 1,777 branches in its native Japan, confirmed to the Standard that it will be opening in Great Newport Street near Leicester Square on Wednesday of this week.
A manager at the new restaurant told the Standard that they will be opening this Wednesday December 12, serving from 12pm at lunchtime until 11pm in the evening.
The London restaurant will be the first venture for the chain – nicknamed CoCoICHI by fans – in Europe, which has more than 150 restaurants across the rest of Asia, and 8 locations in the US.
The restaurant is famed for serving kare raisu – curry rice dishes – with diners able to customise the spiciness and sweetness of the dish, and the size of their rice portion. Visitors can also choose from a range of toppings for their dish, ranging from scrambled egg to hamburgers.
The restaurant also sells chicken katsu curry – Japanese curry with panko breadcrumbed fried chicken – which is already a popular dish in the UK.
The opening comes less than a week after the highly-anticipated arrival of another Asian restaurant brand, Din Tai Fung, the largest chain of dumpling restaurants in the world. The Covent Garden restaurant has reportedly had queues of up to four hours.
