Curry House Coco Ichibanya, Estancia Mall Review

Last Saturday, we checked out the new Estancia Mall at Capitol Commons in Oranbo, Pasig, and had dinner at Coco Ichibanya Curry House.

Curry House Coco Ichibanya is one of the top rice curry chains in Japan, and this is their first branch in Manila. Estancia Mall is a newly opened high-end mall.

Directions to Estancia Mall

They actually had free parking in their basement parking last weekend. Unfortunately, the free parking has ended. Beginning March 16, 2015, Estancia Mall basement parking rates are now P50.00 for 4-wheel vehicles and P35.00 for motorcycles (flat rate).

If you don’t know how to go to Estancia Malls, just go to the Pasig Kapitolyo rotunda along Shaw Blvd, you can’t miss the big sign that says Capitol Commons. Follow the big road to go inside the development – on the left, you will see a restaurant called Buffalo Wild Wings, so just turn left and go towards that direction, the entrance to Estancia Mall’s basement parking will be nearby.

Estancia Mall itself reminded me a bit of Rockwell’s Powerplant and Greenbelt 3. At the moment, a lot of stores are not yet open, but there’s going to be a Pottery Barn, a PB Teen and a PB Kids. Stores like Old Navy, Uniqlo, Debenhams, etc… are already there.

However, most of the people there didn’t seem to be there to shop. Most of them were there for the food.

Curry House Coco Ichibanya

This new restaurant got on my radar when I read Tales from the Tummy’s recent post on it. Coco Ichi is located at the basement of the mall. It’s well-lighted but rather small, and when we got there, we were on a waitlist – we were 10th! Goes to show just how many people are interested in trying this new chain! We left our cellphone number so they can call us when it’s our turn. Instead of waiting near the restaurant, we spent the time exploring the rest of the mall.

How to Order

You can do a make-your-own-dish type or you can go with a set. For the make-your-own, you start with rice. The price is P180 for 300g of rice and curry sauce. You can add more rice (pay more) or reduce the amount of rice (less P20). The rice they use is Japanese rice. Then you can choose the spiciness of your curry. See below:

After deciding on your rice and curry, you can check the Toppings list and you can add whatever topping you want – you can order as many toppings as you want, no one will judge you, hahaha  Sorry, I wasn’t able to take more pictures of the menu because our food arrived so quickly! Here are some of the toppings:

After that, you can also get some add-ons:

If you add P80, you can choose any 2 items from soup, salad, dessert or drinks selections; add P100, any 3 items; add P130, any 4 items. The items must be from different categories. You can’t choose 2 drinks for P80, for example.

Note that your bill will be P180 (rice + curry) + any toppings + add-ons and extras + service charge.

You can skip the rice if you don’t want to eat rice.

The Food

Instead of getting the make-your-own dish, we stuck with the set menu items. J, the beef addict, ordered the Beef Omelet Curry (P330). I wanted to try the “bestseller” and the waitress told me that it was the Pork Cutlet Omelet Curry (P360). We ordered an extra Cheese Hamburger (P180) and J also wanted extra cheese (P80). But the waitress said that we also had to get extra curry (P45) with the extra cheese. J wanted to order the Milk Tea (P100), but I told him that we should just get a +2 add on (P80) for his dish because instead of adding P100 for the Milk Tea, we get the Milk Tea and soup (I chose the soup, but you can also get a salad or dessert) for only P80. We just split the set menu – J gets the Milk Tea since I didn’t want any extra drink, but I get the soup because J doesn’t want the soup. It works out and saved us a bit vs ordering the Milk Tea and soup separately 🙂

As you can see, getting the set menu add-on is more value for money.

The smaller bowl in the middle is the extra curry we ordered + the extra cheese. The cheese has string-ily melted in the curry and it is yum!

This is the Beef Omelet Rice:

J seemed to like his Beef Omelet Rice just fine. And he particularly liked his cheese curry!

This is the Pork Cutlet Omelet Rice:

I totally liked the curry. If it wasn’t embarrassing to do in public, I’d have happily licked my plate clean. But paired with the omelet rice and pork cutlet, the curry seemed to overpower the other food and make them seem bland  I don’t think I would be ordering the Pork Cutlet Omelet Rice again because of this. Disappointed. Probably my fault for ordering something so “safe”.

One of the mysteries I am pondering is how in the world they managed to cook the omelet. The omelet was “swirly”, for lack of a better word. It’s not one big piece of egg, but, you know how thin, long and swirly the egg can be in Chinese Nido soup? It’s something similar, but more omelet than soup.

Here’s the Cheese Hamburger. Wow, look at that delicious cheese just oozing out of it! Taste-wise, I think the hamburger would pair better with the curry than the pork cutlet.

This is the soup. It’s a clear soup of seaweed and vegetables, but tastes very good, and looks healthy!

Here’s the Milk Tea. J said that he wished they gave him more sweetener – it just wasn’t sweet enough with that 1 little tub of gum syrup.

Service and Ambience

The food arrived very fast. After ordering, all the food arrived in less than 5 minutes! That was like, the fastest I’ve ever experienced in any restaurant. I didn’t even have time to finish taking pictures of J’s Milk Tea before everything arrived all at once.

The red thing on the table is pickled radish, and it’s pretty good, pampatanggal umay. That shaker is full of hot spice. They also provided wet towels. That’s not an order sheet. It’s a comment form 

Lately, I’ve been bothered by how small the tables are in the newer restaurants. And it’s the same thing here. Our table was already full with all the food we ordered. Good thing we were seated near the wall/ledge, so I was able to rest my camera, our phones, and the utensil tray on the ledge because we didn’t have space on the table anymore.

Will we go back? I don’t know. Maybe? Not sure. Although I am very happy with the curry sauce and found it quite flavorful, the pork cutlet was really not a good combination for me. It was like, yum yum yum curry +++flavor, then eating some of the rice, omelet and pork suddenly has the flavor going negative —flavor. Like, it really subtracts flavor, like a flavor void  I might give Coco Ichi another chance and order something else next time should we ever find ourselves in the area. Still on the fence.

It was a good experience though. At least we’ve tried it and know what to expect next time, and are a bit wiser about what to order.