Why the UK is katsu crazy

Food trends are often cyclical – one era’s craze spawns a multitude of copycats, dies down, and then gets resurrected years or even decades later. This happened with the Cosmopolitan cocktail, and as chef and cookbook author Tim Anderson writes in an article for Vittles, it is currently happening with katsu curry in the UK, which he is calling the “Katsuification” of Britain.

If you live in Britain you are probably aware that katsu curry is everywhere, stretching far beyond the strict definitional confines of “breaded cutlet of meat”: there are katsu curry crisps, katsu curry cheese, and even katsu curry baby food. In a sense, says Anderson, the current craze is bringing something home to Britain that it started centuries ago, when the British navy introduced curry to an insular island country. “Katsu curry has come full circle around the globe, from Britain to Japan and back to Britain again,” he explains.

Anderson notes that while curry itself traveled to Japan via the British navy, katsu curry – with the inclusion of a breaded cutlet – appears to be a Japanese invention, dating back to around 1918. It didn’t become popular outside of Japan for decades after that, but it is now commonplace in other regions like the UK. Anderson says that while it wasn’t a big hit in Britain until relatively recently, there were precursors that bore more than a passing resemblance. “Fish and chips with curry sauce is, essentially, the same flavour profile as katsu curry, just with a different kind of crispy coating and a different pile of carbs on the side,” he says.