Everyone’s been bento boxing

It always comes to this. Partaking of Japanese food is not just perfunctorily putting food into one’s mouth. There are rituals involved, as well as cultural references, whether pop or much older, more traditional, infinitely richer.

Take the case of the bento box. This is not just a way of packing a meal into a fit-for-purpose container. There is so much more than that. Samurai warriors during the Kamakura period used an early form of the bento (ky-dai). From samurai to farmers and hunters, and eventually to workers and railway commuters, they all needed a convenient, compartmentalized food container for a life that was always on the go. And there are variants of the bento box, such as the ekiben (sold at train stations), konbini bento (found in convenience stores), obento (prepared at home for lunch at work or school), and decoben (a decorative bento). There are boxes for all manners of voyaging.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. We found ourselves with a bento box in hand inside a restaurant designed to resemble a Tokyo metro train station, in the company of a pair of anime characters walking around, plus a girl shrieking “Gow Bentow!” in frequencies that would pierce even Godzilla’s ears.

Everyone was excited at the event in BGC for the relaunch of the Go Bento brand. It was not just a trip into gustatory satisfaction, but also a sort of mental cosplay into pretending we were in Shibuya or Shinjuku with a pocketful of yen about to make a fresh haul at Disk Union and RecoFan (for me), Tokyu Hands (for Avee), and Ishibashi music store (for Jules).

Scott Tan — the managing director of Scottland Food Group Inc., the company behind Go Bento as well as Bonchon — shared how he studied Japanese restaurants when his group was planning on redesigning Go Bento and realizing this: restaurants either went the traditional route or imbibed a modern J-pop, Manga aesthetic. That observation piqued his interest.

“One day, I was in a metro train station in Tokyo, and I realized that our Go Bento concept would work well with that vibe,” Tan explained. Sleek lines, glass facades, steel structures, red tiles, iconic signage, the easy-access layout — all these elements were taken in by the Scottland executive. What about the food, though?

“This blueprint goes well with our bento boxes, since they are a huge part of Japanese people’s culture and heritage, just as train stations are. They are embedded in the culinary DNA of the working people. They grab a bento box before going to work, on their way home, and anytime they want to eat a quick and complete meal. I really wanted to create that feeling and the value that Japanese people have when it comes to their food.”

Tan fell in love right away with Japanese cuisine when he was seven or eight years old and tasted his first katsudon.

“That was on Annapolis Street in Greenhills and sarap na sarap ako nun. Japanese cuisine has this amazing balance of sweet, spicy and salty,” he said. Back then, it was a bit expensive to partake of premium Japanese food. But now, Japanese-inspired restaurants such as Go Bento have placed the emphasis on the value-for-money proposition.

“Quality and authenticity are essential to us. That’s why we attach a lot of importance to small things. Customers are more discerning now. For example, we want our shrimp to have the perfect texture, we use fresh breading for our katsu, and I insist on serving only Japanese rice. We found the sweet spot between very good quality and price. We want our bento box to be at par with Japanese casual-dining restaurants, but always at pocket-friendly prices,” emphasized Tan.

For the bento boxes, choose from the following sets: beef misono, chicken/pork katsu, tempura, chicken teriyaki, yakitori, ebi katsu, karaage, and chicken/pork katsu curry. Then there’s the one-piece and two-piece chicken bento and salmon teriyaki. Go Bento customers can also customize their meals and go big with the Big Bento, which consists of two mains, miso soup, a side dish, veggies and Japanese rice. Selections also include donburi (oyakodon, yakitoridon, gyudon, ebi katsudon and beef misono), as well as a la carte crowd favorites: umami fried chicken, karaage-style chicken, chicken or pork tonkotsu, spicy karaage ramen and sukiyaki. There are boxes for all categories of craving.

It took a couple of stops to get to this point, Scott explained.

“Go Bento started in 2016, 2017. It was really a slow burn because I was more focused on our other restaurant. Go Bento was more of a passion project then. But over the years, we listened to our customers and what they wanted in terms of tweaks. Then the pandemic happened and we had to slow down.”

What Scott’s group did during the plague years was to put up 15 or 16 outlets (the majority of them focusing on cloud-kitchen delivery services) that proved very popular. “We were surprised — sales were up, people were ordering a lot, and there were many repeat customers, that they gave us the confidence to relaunch Go Bento after the pandemic.”

After the first standalone in BGC, expect other outlets in Robinsons Galleria and the Alabang area. More stations to come, so to speak.

Contemporary life, after all, is a journey from station to station. And it helps having a boxful of wonders to get us through the day.

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The reimagined Go Bento restaurant is at The Spa Building, Bonifacio High Street in BGC. For information, visit GoBentoPH on social media.