EVERYONE’S BEEN BENTO BOXING

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 pocketfriendly 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.