Crazy-cheap Tokyo lunch: All-you-can-eat curry rice for 220 yen (US$1.40)!

We go looking for faults in this sounds-too-good-to-be-true Ikebukuro offer.

There’s no shortage of writers with healthy appetites on the SoraNews24 team, and as such we’ve rarely been accused of having eyes that are bigger than our stomachs. Our bank accounts, though, are of more modest sizes, and so we’re always on the lookout for a dining bargain, which is why the sign pictured above, which we came across in downtown Tokyo’s Ikebukuro neighborhood, immediately caught our attention.

There are three important pieces of information written on it:
● 30分 = 30 minutes
● 330円 = 330 yen
● ご飯とカレーが食べ放題 = All-you-can eat rice and curry

Honestly, that last one alone would have been enough to convince us to investigate further, but the offer of all-you-can-eat curry rice for just 330 yen (approximately US$2.10) was so compelling that our feet, almost without any conscious thought of our own, carried us through the entrance to the establishment.

However, it wasn’t a conventional restaurant or take-out joint offering this unbelievable deal, but the Ikebukuro branch of Customa Cafe, an Internet/manga cafe where the main draw, ostensibly, is supposed to be the banks of computers available for online browsing and gaming, plus the racks of collected manga volumes and magazines to read.

And the offer got more enticing still when we saw a poster hanging in the stairwell that leads up to the cafe’s front door, which revealed that you can actually get all-you-can-eat curry rice for just 220 yen (US$1.40) if you sit at an open counter seat instead of a private booth.

But..there had to be some sort of catch, right? As we walked through the door, we braced ourselves for our hopes to be dashed in at least one of several different ways. Maybe Customa Cafe had an exorbitant membership/sign-up fee. Maybe they gave you a tiny bowl, only big enough for a few mouthfuls of rice, and had some super-slow process for refills so you couldn’t get more than one serving in 30 minutes. Maybe the place was so filthy that you wouldn’t want to eat a single bite of the food, let alone enough to fill yourself up.

It only took a second to confirm that cleanliness actually wasn’t a concern, though, as the place was clean and tidy. However, as we walked up to the counter and said we wanted to use one of the open-counter seats (or “opun seki,” as they’re called in Japanese) for 30 minutes, sure enough, the clerk asked if we were Customa Cafe. Members

However, this turned out to not be a problem at all. The only reason they asked is because if you are a member, you can get three percent of your bill back as credit to be used on a future visit. You don’t need to be a member to use the cafe, nor is it a requirement for the 220-yen all-you-can-eat curry rice offer (and if you do want to become a member, there’s no sign-up or annual fee).

With that settled, we quickly made our way to the self-serve curry rice corner. This is when we learned that Customa Cafe actually supplies two kinds of rice: regular white steamed rice, and takikomi gohan, a kind of rice dish in which seasonings and other ingredients are cooked together with the rice inside the rice cooker.

We had arrived exactly at noon, and while the new batch of white rice wasn’t quite ready yet, there was plenty of takikomi gohan, which on this day was a kind of pseudo-fried rice with egg and pork, and the consistency of a rice pilaf. Following the established protocol for plating Japanese curry rice, we put rice on one side of our plate, and the roux on the other.

The takikomi gohan and curry went together extremely well, and we were very happy to find that the curry was properly rich and flavorful, not some watery, bland sham roux. The provided plates, while not huge, aren’t small either, giving you a respectably sized portion but also leaving you with enough space for the fun of going back for a refill, and by the time we were ready for our second plate, the white rice was ready too.

Having quickly gobbled down plates of curry rice, we were, as you might expect, feeling pretty thirsty…and that’s when it hit us that Customa Café’s 220-yen all-you-can-eat-curry-rice is even more incredible than we’d initially realized, since admission to the cafe also comes with unlimited self-serve drink bar privileges!

There’s a wide variety of beverages to pick from too, including orange juice, cola, melon soda, Calpis, coffee, green tea, and black tea. They even had a sweet strawberry au lait dessert drink and corn and onion broth soups, as simple soups are sometimes treated like parts of the beverage category in Japan.

In addition to three plates of curry rice, we got ourselves a cup of orange juice, and polished off our meal with a relaxing coffee. And yes, the total for this was just 220 yen, with no string attached.

There are still a few things to keep in mind if you’re going to grab a bite to eat at Customa Cafe, though. One is that after your initially requested stay time, the charge to extend is 130 yen for each additional 10 minutes. Because of that, if you initially ask for an open seat for 30 minutes, but end up staying an hour, your bill will come to 610 yen. That’s still a bargain for all-you-can-eat curry rice with unlimited drinks, but if you know ahead of time that you’re going to want to stay for a full hour, if you request a seat for 60 minutes right from the start., it’ll only cost you 440 yen. Also, if instead of an open seat you’d like a private booth, prices for those start at 330 yen for 30 minutes of 660 yen for 60. Finally, ordinarily Customa Cafe only has white rice until 5 p.m., but they’re currently running a promotion where they start serving it as noon, but that’s only for a limited, unspecified period of time.

In any case, though, you really can get all-you-can-eat curry rice in downtown Tokyo for just 220 yen, which is a shockingly good deal, and with Customa Cafe also having branches elsewhere in Tokyo, plus in neighboring Saitama and Chiba Prefectures, it’s a great place to keep in mind if your stomach is empty and/or your wallet is light.

Location information
Customa Cafe (Ikebukuro Nishiguchi branch) / カスタマカフェ（池袋西口店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Toshima-ku, Nishi Ikebukuro 1-21-13
東京都豊島区西池袋1-21-13
Open 24 hours
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
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