New York Times on 9/5/07

A FURRY gorilla suit. The Yankee slugger Hideki Matsui. Fried pork cutlets.

Have you been pining for an inexpensive garment district spot that unites all three of those elements? Then rest easy, fellow travelers: Go! Go! Curry, the first American incursion of a chain peddling Japanese curry — which is nothing like the turmeric-dominated Indian-style stew dishes that most Americans associate with the word “curry” — is the place for you.

The gorilla suit is worn by employees who wear signs identifying them as the restaurant’s mascot, Gorry, and stand on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 38th Street distributing promotional postcards for the place, which is a few doors away. Zany promotions are big at the restaurant.

It opened, in the space once occupied by the now-dethroned restaurant called Ramen King, on the fifth of May, the fifth month of the year, and planned on selling its first 555 portions of curry for only $5 each, until the special was extended to run all month long.

Hideki Matsui’s jersey number, 55, which he wore as a star on Tokyo’s dominant Yomiuri Giants before he ever donned Yankee pinstripes, was the inspiration for the shop’s name (“go” is five in Japanese). Mr. Matsui is held in totemic regard by the folks behind Go! Go! Curry, so much so that the restaurant offers a 55-cent discount on all in-restaurant orders on days after Mr. Matsui hits a home run.

The baseball theme extends to the menu: curries are sold in sizes from a walk (small: $5 plain, $7 with chicken or pork cutlets, shrimp or sausage) to a triple (extra large: $7.50 plain, $9.50 with one of the meat options), each extra base meaning more rice, more curry sauce and more pieces of the fried protein of your choice will be piled higher on your plate.

There’s a short roster of toppings, including processed cheese and natto (an extra-funky fermented soybean product), for $1 to $2 extra, though my experience was that the curries were always satisfactorily accessorized. That was especially the case with the Grand Slam ($12.50) — the kitchen sink of the menu — which is the best deal, and, if for nothing more than the variety it offers, the most interesting option for first-timers to pick at.

The Grand Slam includes a panko-breaded chicken cutlet (dryish, but so thin it doesn’t matter much), a panko-breaded pork cutlet (moister, but not of particular distinction), a single fried shrimp (juicy, within a solid jacket of panko batter) adorned with a dollop of mayonnaise and a pair of sturdy Japanese pork sausages in crisp casings. A hard-boiled egg, a little heap of radish pickle and a messy frizz of thinly sliced cabbage round out the plate.

That zoo’s worth of fried meat is mired, tar-pit style, in the thick slick of dark curry sauce atop a pile of rice the size of a pitcher’s mound.

The sauce is the one constant ingredient in Japanese curry (often rendered as kare). At Go! Go!, it is thicker than gloop and too loose to be called sludge, but both of those terms came to mind when I was considering its texture.

There’s a meaty, beany quality to its flavor, and sweetness around the periphery of it. It tastes much more like something that is reconstituted than something that is cooked. Beguiling might be the way to describe it: it bewitches with its inscrutable foreignness, its unapologetic Japanese-ness, its “I guess fried food does taste good covered in this sticky stuff”-ness. It is, most certainly, authentic kare, though that authenticity is no guarantee it will find a wide audience here.

But by couching their bets with gorillas (who doesn’t love gorillas?), a tangential connection to Mr. Matsui (dog-fighting charges seem unlikely, another .300 season doesn’t) and a location (however dowdy) in a neighborhood home to a sizable lunch crowd without a ton of options, they’ve given themselves a leg up on a chance of doing so.

Gothamist on 6/12/07
"all we could think was: "Go Matsui!"

We arrived at the Japan Day festivities in Central Park last Sunday afternoon only to find that the food had run out. Nevertheless, we enjoyed an excellent jazz combo, but soon it started to rain. In order to salvage the day, and keep with the Japanese theme, Gothamist headed downtown to give Go!Go! Curry a try.

One of the reasons we waited so long to pay Go!Go! Curry a visit was that it was host to Gromesque lines last month. The garment district eatery is the first U.S. location of a Japanese chain whose name honors Yankees' outfielder Hideki Matsui. Go means five in Japanese, hence the tribute to number 55. Go!Go! Curry is likely to make baseball fans out of Japanese food enthusiasts and vice-versa, thanks to a promotion that offers free toppings the day after Matsui whacks one out of the park. A flat-screen TV plays a compelling loop of Go!Go! Curry promos, ranging from cheerful restaurant workers doing their thing to J-Pop punctuated by shouts of "Go!Go!," to more serene images of rice harvesting.

The baseball theme extends to the menu, with portion sizes named walk, single, double and triple. Then there's the calorific grand slam curry, a monster platter that comes with fried chicken, pork sausages and a hard-boiled egg, among other things. Not a bad deal for $12.50. Japanese curry is quite different from the South Asian variety. The thick, sweet sauce has a tiny kick of heat and is served over rice with such toppings as slices of tonkatsu, fried pork cutlet. Curry rice is classic Japanese comfort food, a fact born out by the number of Japanese who joined us in the dining room last week, as well as last month's lines.

If you're so inclined, you can order your Go!Go! Curry rice without any toppings. It's certainly the cheapest way to go, a walk sans toppings is a mere $5. No doubt the dark, pork-enriched sauce probably makes a nice snack poured over rice. Gothamist went for something a bit more substantial: a walk portion of fried chicken and a single portion of fried pork. As we alternated between bites of crispy pork and chicken bathed in the rich, homey curry, all we could think was: "Go Matsui!"