Curry Favor (Velocity @ Novena Square)

A Singaporean friend introduced me to this place after I asked her about Japanese curry in Singapore. Been on the road a bit so kinda miss mum's weekly curry cook out. I won't be home for a while so was lookin for some substitute to tide me over. =)

This place serves some of the best Japanese curry I've ever had period. Authentic stuff man. Even mum can't cook this. My work had taken me to enough cities for me to say this is one of the best Japanese curry outside Japan.

Who would have thought in Singapore? I like Singapore and the people I meet here are fantastic but not exactly somewhere I expect to find authentic Japanese curry.

I particularly enjoyed the Hire Katsu and the Beef curry. If you are a fan of Japanese curry this is good stuff. Good food and great company makes a magnificent evening. Will be back when I come back to Singapore next trip.

Me and my friends are thinking where to celebrate our friend's birthday next week. While roughly thinking all the restaurants in Novena and Novena Square 2. All got into our mind the curry favor japanese kitchen located at 3rd floor beside of Monsoon & Magic Wok. We are not fan of curry because when you say "CURRY", the first thing comes into your mind is with coconut base,spicy and the smell is quite undesirable. But when we tried the curry in this restaurant,it's very different and no coconut milk at all. unbelievable:-). So everytime we are craving for curry, we go to curry favor. And while having chit-chat about curry favor, we are sharing our funny,good, and worst experiences in different restaurants. In Curry Favor experiences:
FOOD / BEVERAGE: Food was very nice especially the japanese curry.At side orders, we always ordered Age Cheese Chikuwa (it's a cuttlefish inside have cheese but now with different coating but it's still tastes good)and Stuffed Mushroom (with prawn & scallop inside but must eat while it's hot and dipped into tartar sauce). For main dishes, we liked the rosu katsu(pork with a third layer of fats),hire katsu(pork fillet),cheese katsu(pork filet inside have cheese),pork stewed(pork belly), beef and vegetable (but the taste quite bland,but i liked the vegetables inside),beef and mushroom(..uhmm..very nice and delicious especially the beef cutlet very tender and it cooked medium rare),we also loved the beef and mushroom curry udon(tis is the best,the udon is very springy and it compliments with curry, esp. the extra spicy). But we are just wondering about the level of spiciness.(1)Regular w/c is not spicy at all (2)Spicy w/c a bit spicy (but sometimes it's very spicy); (3) Extra Spicy w/c is really spicy (but sometimes too spicy that can't even taste the curry, only can taste the chilli). In Beverages, i liked the barley tea. Even the taste is not that nice but the smells very nice and i remember what the waitress told me when i asked her w/c japanese teas that's very nice. She recommend me this tea because she says in Japan tis is the popular tea coz it reduces stress and help blood influidity..uhmm... she's quite impressive that in a waitress can explain all the uses of diff. kind of jap. teas. I think she's a foreigner:-)
AMBIENCE: we liked the paintings esp. the cows. so cute. the place is cozy if not busy time. We remembered our first try in curry favor, i think it just opened that time. Lunch time is quite crowded, admittedly maybe because it's new. But quite irritating coz one of the staff (wearing diff.uniform)is shouting in the middle of the restaurant, the table no. who's asking for the bill and recently shouting "Order Out!?!" but as we always eat here, we get used to it. But we find it quite irritating sometimes.
VALUE: Quite expensive compare to the other restaurants in novena esp. Lunch set but reasonable coz it also comes with drinks and dessert. We liked the vanilla ice cream topping.
SERVICE: Service quite disappointing. The food is very slow. The food quality sometimes not good. Salad got hair. One time, one of my sis.'s friend dine-in curry favor, they say that they found plastic inside the cheese katsu, they informed the staff but the staff thought they were just joking till they give the plastic then the staff apologized.
STAFF: Quite friendly. i think only three full-timers in this restaurant and the rest are part-timers coz every day new faces. Staff are very hard-working and quite fast but not that professional.
Two where wearing different uniforms maybe under management staff: (1) Tall girl is quite fierce while taking order not that friendly, never smile while taking order, we asked if any recommendations, she just say if we are in a hurry we try the stewed curry?!? that's it. but anyways we decided to pick whichever we think nicer.
(2) This girl is also wearing diff. uniform. Very friendly, have good pr and quite convincing when she recommend something but do make face when we don't want to order some side dishes. And dressed-up unpleasantly coz we accidentally saw her backside while she's clearing the other table. Sorry, but it's quite disgusting.
(3) The small girl, also friendly and very polite. She doesn't talk too much but when you asked something about the food, she's very knowledgeable in explaining. i'm wondering if she's a local but cannot be coz she's very polite. We liked her to served us coz you will feel that you are really taken-care of. She's not fast like the other staffs who ran to picked up foods and serve foods but you will noticed she's in focus and she knows what she will do next. And always served food nicely and says "Enjoy your meal". I admired this kind of staff. I think the management should hire more of like this staff. service like fine-dining restaurant. keep up the good work!
(4) Part-timers. Very fast till we just finished our last bite then they cleared our table. The staffs are always on a rush. Most of the time they just served food any how then run. you want to request something but they just ran fast.

Had a short lunch hour at Novena and decided to try out Curry Favor. Do try out their lunch sets, more worth it than the normal ala carte meal. Had a Beef Yaki & Tempura Bento Set myself and she had a Chicken & Fish Fry Combo Set. The sets came with a choice of either miso soup or salad, a soft drink and a scoop of vanilla ice-cream for dessert.
Have to admit that I was fairly disappointed when my set came. Only 6 small chunks of beef?! The tempura was satisfactory, 3 ebi and some vege. Rice, 2 pieces of tamago(Japanese sweet egg), a side of shredded lettuce and potato salad completed the bento. However I was pleasantly surprised when I popped the first chunk of beef in my mouth. It was tender, juicy and succulent. The sauce went so well with the beef that I found myself slowly savouring the 6 precious chunks I had. The tempura dip was tasty and it sat very well with the tempura dishes. If you like your tempura dip with full flavour, this was it.
The Chicken & Fish Fry combo looked very humble next to my bento set. It comes with japanese curry on the side so you can pour in the curry or dip the cutlets at your own discretion. Curry comes in 3 levels of potency, Regular, Spicy and Extra Spicy. We had the Spicy knowing that the Regular would probably not have much effect. The chicken cutlets were deep fried and it was really tasty and the meat was juicy. Yum! The fish, even better because it was fresh!! You could taste the freshness of the meat under all that batter. Dipped in curry and you have the ultimate combination.
All in all, I'd say that food was above the average level of Japanese curry you'd find at other restaurants. Service wise, they are short-handed, 3 ladies on the floor during lunch hour. 2 are foreigners whose english is not exactly fully understandable so do be patient when ordering with them. E.g I'd asked one of the waitresses what brand of ice tea they carried, she brought out the glass of tea to me and she said, "Yours." I was thinking, "Of course it's mine lah. Who else can it be?" So I kinda figured out later that she was saying, "Yeo's" instead. So, once again do be patient with the staff.
Overall it was a pleasant lunch, not near fine dining but definitely worth trying especially if you're into something new.