Maji Curry is a Japanese curry house with an unusually strong claim to fame: its Cheese Fondue Hamburg Curry won the Kanda Curry Grand Prix — Japan's largest curry competition — twice, first in 2018 and again in 2022. Founded by Ken Takagi after a ten-year quest to fuse fragrant ethnic spices with the deep simmering of European-style curry, the brand grew from a ten-seat shop in Tokyo's Kanda-Jinbocho curry district into restaurants across Japan, Thailand and Singapore.
At the Square 2 branch in Novena, the focus is curry rice built for everyday cravings: slow-simmered Special Beef Curry, spice-fragrant Keema Curry, pork cutlet and fried-prawn topped plates, and the grand-prix-winning hamburg steak draped in molten cheese fondue. A fluffy omelette version mellows the heat for spice-shy diners, and a range of toppings lets regulars build their own bowl.
True to its slogan — "Save the world with curry!" — Maji Curry donates ten yen to Save the Children for every plate of curry rice sold.
Maji Curry began, fittingly, with seriousness. The brand's name plays on the Japanese word for earnest — *majime* — and its founder, Ken Takagi, spent a decade living up to it. A curry lover since childhood, Takagi travelled the world chasing great curry, encountering spice traditions and national spice cultures along the way. His idea was to fuse the fragrance of ethnic spices with the deep, slow simmering of classic European-style curry, and he spent ten years consulting celebrated chefs, testing and refining, until the flavour in the bowl finally matched the one in his imagination. That dish — spicy enough to crave, comforting enough to eat every day — became MAJI CURRY.
The method is deliberately layered: secret spices built up in stages, Japanese and Western ingredients simmered together, and timing calibrated right down to the cooking of the rice. The brand describes the result as a small revolution in the curry world — and, so far, the curry establishment has agreed.
The proof came fast. Just seven months after opening a ten-seat shop in Kanda-Jinbocho, Tokyo's famous curry battleground, Maji Curry entered the 2018 Kanda Curry Grand Prix — Japan's largest curry event, featuring some 400 curry shops — and won on its very first attempt, the fastest victory in the competition's history. In 2022 it returned and took the title again, with the very same dish: the Cheese Fondue Hamburg Curry Rice, a juicy hand-kneaded hamburg steak draped in molten cheese fondue over the house curry. Winning the grand prix twice with one plate made it the benchmark for everything the brand serves.
The Singapore branch carries that grand-prix playbook into Novena. The Cheese Fondue Hamburg Curry is the obvious first order — the cheese fondue rounds off the spice while the hamburg keeps it hearty. The Special Beef Curry is the slow-cooked counterpoint, its beef simmered for hours until silky, the spice gravy fragrant and deeply savoury. Keema lovers get a spice-forward minced curry the kitchen loves to dress up: a molten raw egg on top, a pour of cheese fondue sauce over it, or both — a combination the shop calls addictive once you've tried it.
Diners who shy away from heat have a real answer in the fluffy omelette curry, which the shop itself recommends for spice-wary guests. Heartier appetites can turn to the Vegetable & Pork Cutlet Curry, with its crisp-fried cutlet and colourful vegetables, or the MAJI 3-Topping Curry, which piles pork cutlet, fried prawn and hand-kneaded hamburg onto a single plate. Toppings range from sausage to egg, and each branch keeps a variety on hand, so building your own combination is part of the experience.
Beyond the trophies, Maji Curry runs on a slogan — "Add Maji Curry to the world, add spice to life" — and a promise: "Save the world with curry!" Ten yen is donated to Save the Children for every plate of curry rice sold, a habit the brand has carried from Tokyo to Thailand, Singapore and onward toward the United States and Canada. Back at the Kanda-Jinbocho flagship, the walls now carry row upon row of celebrities' autographs — a souvenir of how quickly the little ten-seat shop became a destination.
For Singapore diners the essentials are simple: Maji Curry sits at Square 2, 10 Sinaran Drive, #02-07, in Novena, though the website does not publish this branch's opening hours, so it is worth confirming with the mall before you go. And if the flavour follows you home, the brand spent dozens of test batches developing a retort-pouch version of its glossy, medium-spicy beef curry — sold online in Japan — that fans say tastes almost identical to the restaurant version. All you need to add is freshly cooked rice.