ABOUT CURRY.LIFE

About this site

CURRY LIFE is a Hokkaido curry database run by Sou, who lives in the Maruyama area of Sapporo. I visit the curry shops of Hokkaido one by one, eat there, and check the details myself — that accumulation of first-hand information is what this site values most. The visit reports, taste charts and on-site verification marks on each shop page all come from my own reporting.

Every winter we publish the New Year holiday opening-hours guide (in Japanese) — please make use of it.

What's next

Right now I am working through on-site visits to every shop in the database, at a pace of about two a week. Shop by shop, I verify the opening hours, parking, payment methods and whether an English menu is available, then add a visit report and a taste chart.

I am also expanding these English pages for curry fans visiting Hokkaido from abroad, and building out the site's own classification of soup strength and features.

How we classify shops (our own standards)

The classification on this site does not copy existing restaurant guides. It is an original system I built up through years of eating my way around Hokkaido and researching its curry. Here is how it works.

Genre

Six genres: soup curry / Indian curry / European-style (roux) curry / spice curry / dashi curry / others. How the shop describes itself comes first, and each shop gets exactly one main genre. Shops that can't be pinned down — say, a place equally devoted to both soup and roux curry — are deliberately left unclassified. The database covers restaurants whose main business is curry; izakaya or cafés that happen to serve curry on the side are not listed as a rule.

Soup strength & features (soup curry only)

We read each soup along two axes. One is strength — light, balanced, or rich. The other is features: we tag only what genuinely stands out in a soup — shrimp, tomato, Japanese dashi, pork bone, beef bone, coconut, medicinal herbs (yakuzen) — and skip common bases (like chicken stock) that nearly every shop uses. This is not a ranking of which shop is best; it is a map for choosing what kind of bowl you feel like today. A tag is assigned only when official information or an actual visit gives us confidence — never by guesswork.

Lineage

A family tree of where each owner trained and which shop they branched off from. Hokkaido soup curry evolved by branching out from a handful of origins, so tracing the lineage tells you a lot about how a shop will taste. Rather than a category, we weave the lineage into each shop's write-up, and only when there is a solid source (official profiles, reliable interviews).

Dashi axis & taste chart

The dashi axis records what the soup is fundamentally built on (chicken stock, pork bone, shrimp, Japanese dashi and so on). The taste chart is a four-axis profile — light–rich / broth-led–spice-led / refined–hearty / classic–distinctive — given only to shops we have actually eaten at. Spiciness is not an axis: at most shops you choose your own heat level, so it is not part of a shop's character.

Accuracy

Taste descriptions are tied to their sources ("the shop describes it as…", "it is known for…"), and anything we have confirmed with our own palate is written separately as a visit report. Hours and addresses are checked against official information and closures are re-checked regularly — but please confirm the latest status on each shop's official SNS. If you spot an error, we would be grateful if you let us know at the contact below.

For international visitors — start here

• Sapporo Soup Curry: The Complete Guide — what soup curry is, the soup styles, where the shops are.
• How to Order Soup Curry — spice levels, rice, toppings, in five steps.
• All Shops — browse every shop in English, grouped by area.

The soup styles currently in the database: Light (47) / Balanced (35) / Rich (45).

Corrections and questions are welcome at yamada.soichiro@gmail.com.