Curry Chicken Dozo House might be a name that sounds familiar to some; an especially so if one used to visit Berseh Food Centre rather often. Dozo House has been around the island across various hawker centres at this current juncture; there are traces online of the establishment being located at Golden Mile Food Centre at one point of time; we also do recall coming across the dimly-lit stall situated at a corner on the lower level of Berseh Food Centre slightly before its disappearance and subsequent reappearance that we had just found out. Dozo House is now located in Tanjong Pagar Plaza Food Centre; the area of which that it is located at is one that is seemingly obvious, considering how it is on the second level and the stall is facing towards the direction of Tanjong Pagar Road. It is also neighbours with a rather interesting stall named TendonYan, which surprisingly serves up Japanese Tendon in the same hawker centre. The offerings at Dozo House have been kept rather simple after all these years of being around different hawker centres and it seems that the current iteration of it at Tanjong Pagar Plaza remains the same โ its specialty item is still no doubt the Japanese curry fried donuts, though they also do carry the simple sweet donut rings that come sprinkled with sugar. Apart from their donut offerings, Dozo House also offers a line-up of โNaanโ breads that comes with different toppings โ some of them being quite peculiar in the case of the Pineapple Ham Naan, Charsiew Naan and a Cream Cheese Naan.
Have come across several posts in the past mentioning about their Chicken Curry donut โ after all, coming across a Japanese-style curry bun (i.e. Kare Pan) is a rather rare occurrence, and more so considering how Dozo House operates from a hawker centre. All of the breads available at Dozo House are kept in a warmer display; while the breads are not piping hot when they are being taken out of the display to be served to the patrons, at least they are still just slightly warmer than room temperature that makes for a rather pleasant eating experience. Dozo House does not describe the elements that goes into the making of their Curry Chicken breads; that being said, the insides do seem to be filled up with potato, chicken and egg. Handling the Curry Chicken bread out of the plastic bag, we did note that the Curry Chicken bread was a little greasy; something that we did feel is still rather reasonable since it does seem that these were being deep-fried. The slightly crusty texture of the bread is well-complimented with the panko crumbs that speckled across the exterior of the bread โ the bread itself also bears a texture that is not particularly dense and can even be said to be rather thin as one can observe the after biting into the Curry Chicken Bread. Some have described this item to be akin to that of a Japanese variant of the local curry puff and we could see why โ the cubes of potatoes, shreds of chicken flesh and egg are what one would be able to find in a local-style curry puff; that being said, the curry here comes with a distinct hint of sweetness almost akin to that of the curry roux of Japanese-style curry, which also provided a richer flavour of the spices towards the ending notes.
The Hotdog Naan that we got was a little bit closer to that of a typical neighbourhood bakery bun in retrospect; lesser of an actual Naan but we cannot dispute on how the bun was softer than what we would have expected from a typical neighbourhood bakery bun nonetheless. The flavours of the Hotdog Naan was pretty expected; the savoury notes of chicken franks, slightly sweet note of mayonnaise and perhaps a slight hint of cheese somewhere โ the textures being a little more unique since apart from the bounciness of the chicken franks, they have included slices of red onions that somehow creates a bite. Overall, Dozo House does seem like a rather simple set-up on first sight; one cannot dispute on how the entire establishment just seems understated considering the lack of fancy decorations or flashy signages that would make them stand out โ this also makes them a stall that one would easily walk past without batting an eyelid. That being said, they do serve up a pretty respectable version of a Japanese Kare Pan here that is rather on point; definitely an interesting indie version that is well worth its price point of $2 โ hopefully being in Tanjong Pagar Plaza where the office folks at the Central Business District are would work out for them this time round.