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Bento Box: Spice up Your Life

…la la la la la la la la la, la la la la la la laa!

Throughout history, various cultures have found different ways to pack freshly prepared homemade dishes for refreshment while working in the field, traveling, hunting, or waging wars. Since ancient times, meticulous and methodical in their eternal quest for perfect harmony, the Japanese began in the 5th century with a tradition that will be perfected and upgraded to the level of science over the centuries, and it looks like pure art.

Box of Flavor, Beauty, and Tradition

Bento is the Japanese version of the “to go” portion, and today it comes in countless delicious and practical versions. The tradition was started by ingenious women who packed their husbands onigiri (rice balls) and hoshii, cooked and well-dried rice that could later be rehydrated in cold or warm water or simply eaten as such. Over time, these initially modest and simple portions began to take on more gastronomically demanding and decoratively impressive properties. Meticulously decorated wooden boxes were added partitions in order to store a complete and nutritionally rich meal of several different components—usually rice, millet or noodles, fish or meat, and boiled or pickled vegetables—and in the Edo period, from the 17th to the middle of the 19th century, bento boxes made of lacquered wood became a matter of etiquette and prestige. People even carried them to the theater and deliciously snacked on them when the curtain came down, so they got a new name: makunouchi, which literally means “when the curtain comes down.”

Everywhere You Go, You’ll Always Take the Bento With You

A new and crucial milestone in the evolution of bento portions comes with the establishment of rail transport. The Utsunomiya Station in Tochigi Prefecture, on July 16, 1885, served the first ekiben, now an iconic variant of bento portions sold at train stations, and it contained two rice balls and pickled radishes in bamboo leaves. This date marks the beginning of the commercialization of the bento tradition, which soon became ubiquitous at every step in a wide range of variants, from modest and ascetic to incredibly luxurious and rich, with textures, colors, styles, and aesthetics similar to real works of art.

Bento (R)evolution

Since at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Japanese schools did not offer meals to their students, the duty fell on mothers—as usual—to prepare nutritionally high-quality bento portions for their children, but the situation soon escalated. Arranging as rich, unusual, attractive, and enticing a portion as possible in taste and appearance became a matter of honor. As if women didn’t face enough challenges as it was, they now had to, with each new portion, prove themselves as cooks, artists, and mothers. Faced with shortages in the period between the two world wars, women stirred up a riot and eventually forced schools to organize kitchens and provide quality meals for all children. But as fashion is a matter of cycles, during the economic boom of the 1980s, bento boxes returned to schools stronger than ever, with edible components arranged in increasingly impressive images. Today, you can find in bento boxes portions in the form of landscapes, monuments, abstractions, or portraits of favorite anime and manga heroes, and to the joy of millions of Japanese mothers, they are rarely brought from home today because they can be bought literally everywhere.

What Kind of Bento Do You Want Today?

At railway stations, you can find the good old ekiben; at airports, soraben; specialized bento stores offer hokkaben; and the one you can order in our restaurant is called shidashi bento, or, in the generally accepted English version, the bento box. Traditionally, it includes tempura, rice, and pickled vegetables, but we’ll pack anything you want from our menu for you. And, in order to be able to look into the eyes of a tormented Japanese mother without shame or guilt, we try to make your bento box not only enticingly tasty but also visually striking, luxurious, and, above all, harmonious in the Japanese style.

Order your bento box today and tell us if we succeeded!

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