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Does the Blue Mt Fuji Curry taste as terrifying as it looks?

Oona McGee Oct 1, 2023
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We go on a trek to conquer this mountain of curry, and end up learning something in the process.

Mt Fuji, or “Fujisan” as it’s known in Japanese, is Japan’s most famous peak. Due to its global popularity, you can find a whole heap of products that feature Mt Fuji as a motif…but for our reporter Udonko, there’s one product that’s unrivalled in its visual impact.

Fujisan Blue Curry is enough to stop anyone in their tracks as soon as they lay eyes on it, and Udonko happened across it while browsing the retort curries on the Yodobashi e-commerce site. Although the curry was originally offered as a menu item at the Mt Fuji Lavacafe, located inside the Mt Fuji World Heritage Center in Yamanashi Prefecture, it became so popular that it was commercialised and now it’s sold at a wide variety of retailers.

Udonko purchased hers from Yodobashi for 715 yen (US$4.79), and when it arrived, she checked the ingredients list and was surprised to find that peach puree was on the list, along with more savoury ingredients like sautéed onions and ground chicken.

The peaches were sourced from Yamanashi Prefecture, where the retort curry is produced, which was a nice way to support local farmers in the area. However, though she’d heard of apples in curry before, this was her first time seeing a curry with peaches in it, and she couldn’t help but wonder how a product containing peaches could end up looking so blue.

▼ As she looked at the instructions for making the curry, she began to feel a flutter of nerves.

The first step would be to pop the retort curry pouch into a pot of boiling water and while it was cooking, scoop out a serving of rice onto a plate. That was easy enough, but it was the next step that made her nervous, as the rice needed to be moulded into the shape of the famous mountain.

▼ Putting her nerves aside, she began by shaping it into a round mound.

With the base looking sturdy, Udonko piled another mound of rice on top and that’s when things started to look a little wonky.

She used the scoop in an attempt to bring the grains together, and when that failed, she resorted to using her hand, popping a glove on to stop the rice from sticking to her skin.

She spent a fair amount of time fighting to complete the mountain, but no matter how hard she tried, her mountain-making skills fell short and she failed to replicate the perfect sample on the front of the package.

While moulding the mountain proved to be difficult, pouring the curry onto the rice was much easier.

Pouring carefully to avoid sullying the top of the mountain, Udonko let the blue roux slide down the sides of her rice mountain, forming a wondrous pool around it.

The mountain was a little wonky, and grains of rice were poking out in all the wrong directions, but in the end, with the roux poured around the sides, Udonko’s little mountain did resemble Mt Fuji!

▼ As long as you keep the peak white, and use a little imagination.

Now the only thing left to do was taste the curry, which looked more like a terrifying blue-green slime than an actual curry. Though her brain was begging her to run away from the fearsome-looking spoonful she was lifting to her mouth, Udonko mustered up all her courage and took that final step into the unknown.

Almost holding her breath in fear, Udonko suddenly relaxed as she realised the roux was absolutely delicious!

Despite its bold appearance, the curry had a surprisingly mellow and creamy flavour. The spiciness was a little more intense than a sweet curry but less than a medium spicy curry, and while it was sweet at first, the spiciness slowly made its presence known.

The only hurdle to a meal like this is getting past the first frightening bite, but once Udonko had accomplished that, she couldn’t stop eating the Mt Fuji curry, shovelling spoonfuls into her mouth like a ravenous mountaineer.

It’d been a long while since Udonko had eaten a curry this good, and it seemed even more delicious because of the sense of adventure involved. So if you like playing with your food, or know someone who does, the Fujisan Blue Curry makes for a perfect souvenir. It’s the next best thing to seeing the mountain from the Fujisan View Express train!

Related: Fujisan Blue Curry, Yodobashi
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[ Read in Japanese ]