Japanese Restaurant Near Me in Santa Monica: Hurry Curry of Tokyo Since 1989

Hurry Curry of Tokyo has cooked the same 21-spice Japanese curry since 1989, and since May 2022 it has done it at 2901 Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica, open every day from 11 am to 9 pm. The order is the chicken cutlet curry, which the menu calls its most popular dish, at your choice of four heat levels. For a japanese restaurant near me on the Westside that is open seven days, this is the long-running curry house to know.

The restaurant's own history page says Hurry Curry first opened in West Los Angeles in 1989, after its founders spent time in the 1980s researching curry houses in Tokyo and wanted to bring their flavors and value to Los Angeles. Working with chefs from Tokyo, they developed an original blend of 21 spices for the curry sauce, and the page credits that blend for why customers keep coming back.

For three decades that meant Sawtelle Japantown. Palisades News reported in May 2022 that the restaurant lost its lease there and closed in February 2021, then reopened in the Ocean Park storefront on May 3, 2022. Chief operating officer Fred Serra told the paper that hundreds of people contacted him personally after the closing announcement, devastated to lose a neighborhood spot of more than 30 years.

One thing made the move with the menu. The history page describes the decor as large original color photographs of daily life in Tokyo around 1990, taken by a photographer who spent a week in the city for the job. They give the dining room the feel of a snapshot album from the year the restaurant was born, more than a themed set.

Every Japanese curry plate comes with rice and a small salad with the house dressing, and you choose mild, medium, hot or extra hot. Start medium on a first visit; the sauce is the thick, slightly sweet Japanese style, and the heat builds slowly rather than arriving all at once. Brown rice can be substituted, and add-ons range from a fried egg to spinach and mushrooms.

Beyond the chicken cutlet, the breaded pork loin cutlet curry and the five-shrimp curry are the crunchy options. Tokyo Curry folds ground beef and vegetables into a sweeter, heartier sauce and is garnished with a hard-boiled egg. The menchi katsu curry, two ground beef patties with caramelized onion breaded in panko, is marked dine-in only, which is your reason to eat in rather than order delivery.

Half the fun of the menu is yoshoku, the Western-style cooking that Japan made its own. The Mentaiko and Ika spaghetti tosses mildly spicy cod roe with sauteed calamari and nori and is labeled a Fukuoka specialty. The chicken pasta pairs sauteed vegetables and karaage with the house white sauce, and the cutlet spaghetti comes in a Japanese-style tomato sauce that, the menu notes, contains soy sauce.

From the appetizer list, order the croquettes. Two patties of mashed russet potato with onion are fried in a crunchy panko coat, either with garlic or with lean ground beef and tonkatsu sauce, and the same croquettes also come as a curry plate. The karaage, sake-marinated fried chicken served with what the menu calls its famous house white sauce, is the other snack to share while you wait.

An honest note for vegans: the menu flags in bold that its vegan curry contains gluten, so it does not work for anyone avoiding wheat. Vegetable, eggplant and tofu curries are sized as light eater's portions, so a hungry person should add a side or choose a cutlet. Extra-large pasta adds $1.25, the one plate-level price the restaurant prints on its own menu page.

The clearest published prices are for party packs. Option one, with two entree choices among chicken, beef, spinach and mushroom, vegetable or tofu curry, plus rice or pasta and salad, costs $78 for six people and $155 for twelve. Option two swaps in chicken cutlet, pork cutlet, fried shrimp curry or chicken pasta for $88 for six and $173 for twelve.

The seasonal board is worth a glance before you order. In summer the kitchen adds hiyashi chuka, chilled ramen noodles with chicken breast, cucumber, carrot, thin egg omelet, daikon sprouts and ginger in a sweet sesame soy vinaigrette, listed on the menu as a summer special to get while it is in season. Outside that window, the gyoza, six fried dumplings in pork or vegetable, are the other non-curry dish that travels well as takeout.

The drinks list is short and nostalgic: Calpico, Ramune marble soda in the original flavor, UCC canned coffee with milk straight from Japan and unsweetened iced green tea, alongside pomegranate lemonade and the usual sodas. The kitchen now brews hot coffee every morning, which makes an 11 am curry with coffee a reasonable late breakfast on a weekend.

Because it opens at 11 am every day, including Sunday, Hurry Curry is an easy weekend lunch when many Westside Japanese restaurants are closed or fully booked. Ocean Park Boulevard runs west toward the beach, so a curry lunch pairs well with an afternoon walk down to the sand and the beach path, a short drive or a long walk from the restaurant's door.

If you are craving the old Sawtelle feeling instead, drive north to Sawtelle Japantown and eat okonomiyaki at Chinchikurin, 2119 Sawtelle Boulevard, which sits on the stretch where Hurry Curry spent three decades. Order delivery through the restaurant's own pickup links if you want curry at home; the menchi katsu is the only curry you will have to give up.

Address: 2901 Ocean Park Boulevard, Suite 125, Santa Monica, CA 90405. Hours: Monday to Sunday, 11 am to 9 pm. Spice levels: mild, medium, hot, extra hot. Dine-in only: menchi katsu curry. Party packs: $78 or $88 for six people, $155 or $173 for twelve. Online ordering for pickup runs through the links on the restaurant's website.