Some dishes stay with you long after the trip ends. For a few of us at SENDs, Hokkaido soup curry was one of them, the kind of bowl we’d think about on rainy afternoons and wonder why nobody here was making it properly. So when Soup Curry by Ki-setsu opened at Fortune Centre Level 4 in the 8th of October 2026, we went with quiet hope and a little caution, because longing has a way of raising the bar.
If you’ve only known Japanese curry as the thick, glossy sauce poured over rice, this is a different thing altogether. Soup curry comes from Sapporo, where it has become one of the city’s everyday comfort foods. Instead of a heavy roux, it’s built on a light, aromatic broth, layered with curry spices and served with substantial pieces of vegetables and protein, with rice on the side. It’s light enough to drink by the spoonful, and the soup is meant to be enjoyed as a broth rather than treated as gravy.
Soup Curry by Ki-setsu positions itself as Singapore’s only dedicated traditional Hokkaido-style soup curry concept. It comes from the Ki-setsu Group, the same team behind the omakase restaurant Sushi Masa by Ki-setsu, and you can sense that background in the care taken with the basics, even though this is a far more casual room.
We started the way we’d suggest anyone does, with a spoonful of broth before touching the rice. It’s unmistakably soup-like, but beneath it sits the savoury depth of a chicken-bone stock simmered for more than six hours, followed by warm curry spices and a gradual build of chilli depending on the spice level you choose. There’s no added MSG, and that comes through in how clean it feels; we finished our bowls without the heavy thirst that sometimes follows a rich meal.
The menu now carries four soup curry options. The Chicken Soup Curry Bowl ($14.80) has switched from thigh to a large drumstick, simmered for hours until it barely needs persuading from the bone, and it comes with half a ramen egg and around six kinds of vegetables. The Vegetable Soup Curry Bowl ($14.80) goes further with about nine varieties, also with half a ramen egg. Two newer additions, boneless chicken and tsukune, give regulars a little more room to wander.
The vegetables are no afterthought here. Many are prepared using the su-age, a Japanese technique where they’re fried directly in oil without batter, so the edges caramelise lightly while the insides stay tender. Bell peppers stay sweet, lotus root keeps its bite, eggplant turns soft enough to drink in the broth, and potato and pumpkin add weight to the bowl. The exact selection can shift with market availability, which feels right for a group named after the seasons.
Rice is free-flow, with steamed white or multigrain brown, and there are no rules about how to eat it. Spoon some rice into the curry, drizzle broth over your bowl, or dip a spoonful straight into the soup. We alternated, mostly because we couldn’t decide.
Drinks keep things approachable. A glass of Suntory The Premium Malt’s Pilsner is $7.80, which is notably competitive by Singapore izakaya standards, and standard highballs, including whisky and oolong, start from $6.80. If there’s room afterward, the house ice creams come in matcha, yuzu, goma and New Jersey milk, while the Daizu Soymilk Cheesecake makes a gentler finish; the soy milk keeps it light, but the cheese still comes through.
At $14.80 for a full bowl with free-flow rice, it’s strong value for a sit-down Japanese meal around Middle Road. More than that, it tasted like the thing we’d been missing, honest and warm, and close enough to Sapporo that we stopped comparing halfway through the bowl.
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