As a kid, there was this restaurant close to my house called Curry House (I found out much later that it was a chain) where they only served the sweet, gravy-like curry in various forms, and I loved that stuff. I'd go there with my dad after karate classes maybe once a month (classes were weekly and we had small rotation of different restaurants). At some point different kinds of curry (i.e. Indian, Thai, etc.) just became more prevalent where I ended up living, and I got to the point where I thought I had imagined the delicious stuff.

Then I was able to go to Tokyo on vacation a few years back, and we found this hole in the wall restaurant that was just a counter with maybe 10 seats surrounding a kitchen area with a big vat of thick, brown curry in the back and a fryer and cutting board in the front. There were a handful of businessmen wondering why this American had just walked in, but I had to have the curry. I was trying to learn Japanese at the time, but all I knew was how to read the kana aside from some extremely basic words and survival phrases, so lucky for me the first item on the menu was "katsu kare", that is, curry with a crispy pork cutlet over rice, put another way, exactly what I wanted. I sounded out the words aloud and by the time my brain had parsed what it was reading, the chef gave that kind of "Wow, look at the American reading Japanese!" kind of surprised and happy confirmation for my order. The food came out quickly and was served perfectly, and that experience is one of my favorite memories ever. Now it feels like all I ever want to eat is curry, forever trying to chase that high.