Photos by Richard Smith

For curry lovers with a taste for history, the new Yokohama Curry Museum is a hot option. Richard Smith gets the dish.

Yokohama is becoming a mecca for food connoisseurs who want to experience their favorite dish with more than their palates. Riding the success of the Ramen Museum, the Yokohama Curry Museum, which opened in January, is not only a feast for the mouth (with seven different curry restaurants), but one for the ears and eyes as well.

Currying favor
After braving the queue - which can get exceedingly long on weekends and holidays - visitors take the elevator to the entrance, where sari-wearing, mostly female staff greet them. Adorned with kitschy Indian motifs, the shop at the left of the entrance typically sells Indian-style clothes, miscellaneous Indian-style kitchenware, souvenirs and bags upon boxes of curry mixes- a reminder that curries originated in India.

Costume kitsch for the staff

The museum itself is a recreation of the late 19th century Yokohama port, with exhibits lining the walls. Part of the two-floor central area is built in the form of a ship at port, with a stairway leading up to the eighth floor. There is even a cabin on the eighth floor, complete with Morse code radio instruments that visitors are allowed to fiddle with, and sirens and sounds.

The purpose of the museum' port setting, and the obsession with boats throughout, is made clear in the first exhibit room at the right side of the entrance. Nineteenth-century pictures of cities such as Yokohama and Nagasaki, which were the places where Japanese were first introduced to Western foods like milk, bread and ice cream, are posted on the wall. A plaque states that the first recorded introduction of curry to Japan was in 1863, when Indians ate it on their boat at port. However, it was in 1872 that the spicy concoction was formally introduced into Japan. During the Meiji Era, articles in women's magazines and recipe books taught housewives how to make curry, and its popularity quickly spread.

A history of curry

The exhibit room's exits leads into a corridor built to resemble a street of Yokohama's old port, complete with storefronts and ad boards. An exhibit of "curry's partners" include dosa (pronounced dohsay), a very thin bread-like staple made from rice; yellow saffron rice; and wheat-based chapati and nan. A fun exhibit a little further down has 18 different spice jars set up in a glass cupboard. The idea is that spices are combined according to color, flavor and aroma. Visitors try to guess which spices are used in different recipes or purposes by pressing a corresponding button. If they are right, the jars light up. If they are wrong, a buzzer sounds. A little further is a projection room where visitors can watch old TV ads for curry.

An eighth-floor exhibit shows how curry differs from country to country. In Pakistan, people eat lamb or beef curry soup with chapati or rice, while in North India, spice, nuts, butter and cream are used as ingredients in a curry eaten with wheat flour bread. In Sri Lanka, herbs and coconut milk serve as a base with red chili (red curry) or coffee (black curry), while herbs and coconut milk are used to make green curry.

Spices were once worth their weight in gold

The Tandoru Shoten exhibit explains that spices were used not only as seasoning but also as medicine and preservers. Two charts prescribe which spices are good for which ailments, while a third chart explains how spices were used in mummification in ancient Egypt. Next to it, the Koshin Japan exhibit provides a history of the spice trade in Arabia, where spice was used as money and could be worth its weight in gold. Visitors can press buttons to lower bags of spices on scales already laden with gold and make the gold rise, while a voice in heavily accented Japanese marks approval.

For a museum devoted to curry, this one is too short on history and facts about its subject and too heavy on effects, which may leave some visitors' thirst for knowledge unquenched. However, if the tour has made them hungry for curry, the museum's seven restaurants, each serving a regional variation on the same theme, are more than enough to satisfy their craving. Three of them, Spice-no-Hikkyoh, Hanaman and Echiopiah are Indian. Topka serves Indian and European curry. Meyawa is a Thai curry restaurant. Pak Mori offers Japanese curry while Guru Man makes a milder version of the Yokosuko US Naval Base's curry recipe. One caveat: Patrons must be prepared to endure a queue of 30 minutes or more.

Spicy combinations on display

Getting there
The Yokohama Curry Museum is a two-min walk from Kannai stn, on the seventh and eighth floors of the Isezaki Mall, which also houses a game center. From Shibuya on the Tokyu Toyoko Line, it takes about 30 minutes to reach Yokohama stn. From Yokohama stn on the Keihin Tohoku Line to Kannai stn, two stops away, takes about five min.

PIA Station 7-8F, 1-2-3 Isezakicho, Naka-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa-ken
Tel: 045-250-0833
Open: 11am-10:30pm