OPENS DECEMBER 2019
Quirky curry house Coco Ichibanya, which operates more than 1,000 restaurants in its native Japan as well as a handful of international outposts in South-East Asia and the US, continues its expansion into London with this Marylebone site, its second in the capital.
Coco Ichibanya is known for its menu of customisable (and often unconventional) curries, with diners able to tailor their meal to their own tastes. When dining here, you’ll start with a base of rice and meat, but you can choose a specific topping from a range of options, as well as just how spicy you’d like your curry and how sweet you want the curry’s accompanying sauce to be.
The restaurant’s three-base curries feature beef, pork and hashed beef (there’s also a vegetarian sauce option), while you can tailor the heat of your curry, with spice ratings spanning ‘mild’ all the way through to ‘level 10’. The toppings for your curry are where Coco Ichibanya’s quirkiness creeps in, with unusual options including frankfurter-style sausages, scrambled eggs and hamburger patties which are filled with cheese. There are more conventional toppings available too though, such as fried fish or chicken coated in breadcrumbs.
Coco Ichibanya Marylebone is a fast casual restaurant with a laid-back vibe, a big shift from the site’s former identity as the home of Michelin-starred chef Jason Atherton’s Spanish themed Social Wine & Tapas restaurant, which closed its doors in June 2019. Coco Ichibanya opened its debut London site in December 2018, taking over a space on Great Newport Street in tourist-heavy Covent Garden. It’s rumoured that Coco Ichibanya doesn’t plan on stopping at two London locations, with the restaurant group supposedly planning to open two more London sites within the next year, targeting the throngs of crowds in the capital’s busy shopping centres.