yoko eats the world

My First Biryani at Erick South Masala Diner, Shibuya

Restaurant Published

Translated from my original Japanese post (2019). 日本語の原文を読む →

Salut! It's Yoko, a member of the Japan Biryani Association.

I greet you in French with "Salut!" and yet I've been going on and on about biryani, biryani lately. Sorry about that.

I'm completely hooked now, so please just quietly watch over me for a while.

The thing is, I had never been to a restaurant that serves biryani.

Some dishes, like nikujaga, I make at home a lot but rarely eat out,
but biryani is a foreign dish after all, so I wanted to find a benchmark for how it should taste...

So I had my first real biryani at Erick South Masala Diner (Shibuya), a South Indian restaurant considered a holy land (!?) by biryani fans.

Erick South Masala Diner, Shibuya

I kept seeing reviews of Erick South Masala Diner, the place of my first biryani, that said

"It moved me"
"Honestly, I don't want to tell other people about it."

There are plenty of other places in Tokyo where you can eat biryani,
but with reviews that good it has to be delicious, so I picked it.

In Tokyo, there are branches in Yaesu and Akasaka-mitsuke, and there's also a shop in Nagoya.

What they serve at Erick South Masala Diner is basically traditional South Indian food.

I looked up what South Indian food is, and it turns out to be different from the Indian food most Japanese people picture.

North India is cold and South India is hot, so even the same curry is thicker and richer in the north.

South Indian curry is apparently thin and spicy.

Naan is also more common in the north, and in the south, where rice farming is thriving, they eat a lot of rice.

That's why biryani was born, I guess!

At Erick South, you can have that South Indian food as well as a new-style "modern Indian course."

Modern Indian is a style that blends Indian cooking with cuisines from places like Japan and Europe,

and the contents change with the seasons.

For biryani and South Indian food in Shibuya, Erick South Masala Diner

So, off to Erick South Masala Diner.

It's on the 5th floor of a building called GEMS in Shibuya.

As an aside, GEMS is a building specializing in restaurants, produced by Nomura Real Estate,
and it's full of popular places, so you can't go wrong.

It often happens that I walk into a place and realize it's in GEMS.

Inside, the lighting is calm, and the space is clean and modern!

Counter seats for solo diners.

There are booth seats too. Looks like a place to relax.

Here's the drink menu. There's a lot to choose from.

But I hadn't missed the notice in the elevator saying drinks are ¥100 each until 6 p.m. (all-you-can-drink menu only)...

I checked my phone and it was 17:56, just in time!
I hurriedly asked for the all-you-can-drink menu.

I got a coarse-grated lemon sour for ¥100!
I missed taking a photo, but it came in a big mug.

The food menu has a wide variety too.

Assorted appetizers.

Dosa (something like a crepe)

Stone-oven grilled meat. Apparently cooked in a 400-degree stone oven.

Curries and biryani

Courses

I couldn't decide, but went with à la carte.

Five-appetizer platter

I'm a sucker for these little tastes of lots of things.

Marlin ceviche, Andhra-style chicken pickle, a chilled poriyal-style salad, sundal salad, and a warm stewed eggplant.

The chicken pickle was spicy with a nice sourness, and delicious!

The sweetness of the shredded coconut in the sundal salad felt fresh.

They all share spices, but each tastes completely different, and everything was delicious from the very first dish!

Mysore masala dosa

Dosa is apparently a galette made by thinly spreading a lactic-fermented batter of lentils and rice and cooking it.

For the filling I chose chili tomato sauce and mashed potato.

I thought if it were like a crepe it might fill me up too much,

but it was crisp rather than fluffy.

You eat it topped with sambar and chutney.

Sambar is like a sour, mildly spicy soup curry with vegetables and beans.
It apparently holds a place like miso soup does in Japan.

The chutney is a coconut milk sauce.

I wanted to eat it bit by bit, so I cut it into thin strips, lol

There was also a BIG dosa about 5 times the size, so I think the BIG one would be fun for a large group.

Five-curry tasting set

Another set menu that lets you compare, which makes me happy.

I always play it safe with butter chicken, so this time I chose curries I don't usually eat.

Counterclockwise from the front: lamb, rasam, pork vindaloo, sambar, and chicken in the middle.

You eat them with turmeric rice.
The lamb was reliably delicious. The chicken was the spiciest.

Rasam is a soup that people drink every day in South India,
and if nobody told you, you'd think it was a sour, spicy minestrone, with a tomato base.

It's refreshing and very good!

The pork vindaloo is a sour pork curry, and it was quite a revelation.

Hyderabadi-style bone-in mutton biryani

With one hit after another from the first dish, my expectations were at their peak when the long-awaited mutton biryani arrived!

The whole spices dotted over the basmati rice are beautiful...!
Next to it is raita with plenty of grated cucumber.

Ahh, it looks so appetizing I sighed.

I should have been quite full already, but just seeing the biryani, my stomach started making room at high speed.

A defining feature of biryani is that some of the rice touches the sauce and some doesn't, so the color is mottled. Depending on how it's made, some places cook the basmati that doesn't touch the sauce separately and mix it in afterward.

Erick South sticks to the traditional method: it's cooked in an oven in a ceramic pot sealed with aluminum foil.

Maybe that's why the basmati on top also carries the aroma of the spices, and everything feels unified.

I don't think there were green chilies? The heat was just right. The lamb was incredibly tender and well seasoned.

I tried a moderate amount of raita on it too.

Refreshing, and good in its own way.

Comparing it with the one I made myself,
I was relieved to confirm that the flavor direction wasn't wrong, lol

But mine was quite a bit spicier than Erick South's, so next time I might try making it a little milder.

Gulab jamun

After thoroughly enjoying my first restaurant biryani, I checked the dessert menu at the end.

Gulab jamun
A cheese-based doughnut soaked in syrup, hugely popular in India, where it's said to be "the sweetest in the world."
We offer a mercilessly sweet honey butter flavor and a somewhat less sweet yogurt flavor.

The description is odd in so many ways that you wonder, is it actually good? lol

But I was curious, and after a few minutes of agonizing, I went with the merciless one, lol

Two ping-pong-ball-sized doughnuts sit in the syrup.

First, one bite.

!!

This is... indeed mercilessly sweet!

I couldn't really taste the butter, but the honey syrup is as sweet as the syrup you put in iced coffee.
There's a soft cardamom aroma too.

The doughnut is dense like a muffin, so it soaks up the syrup with all its might, lol

I was a little worried about calories, so I squeezed it on the plate before eating, lol

But if you can handle sweets, I don't think it's unbearable, so if you're on the fence, I hope you'll give it a try! lol

I couldn't try everything, but I got to eat a good amount of South Indian food, and finally had the biryani I'd been wanting, so I was very happy.

Honestly, this might be my favorite restaurant of 2019 so far...

I almost regret not eating South Indian food until now, lol

If you've never tried South Indian food, please go.

By the way, it was almost full by the time I left, so reservations are recommended.

There's still plenty I couldn't try this time, like the chicken biryani and vada, so I'll go back again!

See you next time. Au revoir!

Erick South Masala Diner (Shibuya)
GEMS 5F, 6-19-17 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001
11:30-15:00, 17:30-23:00
(Sundays 11:30-22:00)
Open every day
03-5962-7888

Yoko Born and raised in Tokyo, eaten my way through 58 countries. About me · Instagram

More restaurant stories →