What is Bento ?

Bento (弁当 bentō?)is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. Although bento are readily available in many places throughout Japan, including convenience stores, bento shops (弁当屋 bentō-ya?), train stations, anddepartment stores, it is still common for Japanese homemakers to spend time and energy for their spouse, child, or themselves producing a carefully prepared lunch box.

Bento can be very elaborately arranged in a style called kyaraben or "character bento". Kyaraben is typically decorated to look like popular Japanese cartoon (anime) characters, characters from comic books (manga), or video game characters. Another popular bento style is "oekakiben" or "picture bento", which is decorated to look like people, animals, buildings and monuments, or items such as flowers and plants. Contests are often held where bento arrangers compete for the most aesthetically pleasing arrangements.

There are similar forms of boxed lunches in the Philippines (Baon), Korea (Dosirak), Taiwan (Biandang), and India (Tiffin). Also, Hawaiian culture has adopted localized versions of bento featuring local tastes after over a century of Japanese influence in the islands.

(Source: Wikipedia)

... and what is this site ?

A personal bentobox fan site for bento lovers , where we hope to share interesting knowledge , creative ideas and be a window into this delicious Japanese food culture.

We've been growing more interested in bentobox over the last couple of months, but we've had hard time in finding the sort of information we wanted as beginners, so we've tried to bring it together on this very bentobox website.
Our approach to bento is not 100%  asian traditional - authenticity is pleasing when it's practical, we see nothing wrong with local substitutions , ingredients and following your own tastes.

Please browse around, feel free to subscribe or use our contact form to let us know what you think!