After putting it off and shopping around for what seems like ages, I finally got my first official bento box the other night.
The Angry Chef and I were tooling around Cambridge before dinner and stopped by Tokai Japanese Gifts in the Porter Exchange building on Mass. Ave.
Tokai is stuffed with a fantastic assortment of authentic Asian goods, from teapots to kimonos. Being right outside of the mainly-student-inhabited Porter Square, some of their stuff is admittedly a little overpriced.
Nevertheless, they also have a small selection of bento boxes I could examine in person. So, in we went.
So why do I want a bento box?
Now, I work at a big ad agency in Boston. Contrary to how the media often portrays us advertising folk, I don’t have sexy, three-martini lunches at dark and swanky downtown hipster hangouts.
The truth is that I bring my lunch almost every day—in a regular old tupperware container.
Sure, it’s less exciting than it is in the movies, but it’s almost guaranteed to be more satisfying than most of the pricey-and-not-so-great, fancy lunch fare in downtown Boston.
A bento box would make my lunch a little more neat to eat.
I’ve been after a real one for a while, but have hesitated buying one online because I’m unsure of just how big they are. (And I think some can be pretty small. I am, after all, The Hungry Mouse.)
Behold: My lunch just got 100% happier.
This bento box is wooden on the outside. The inside trays are plastic. It has a nice elastic belly band to hold it together.
It also has a plastic lid to keep the contents of the top tray from leaking out. I like this in particular, since some of my lunches wind up being rather juicy.
The smaller tray in the top tier is removable.
Now that I have a little bit of official gear, look for lots more about packing a bento in the coming months.
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Copyright 2008 The Hungry Mouse�/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.
