There’s something to be said for having everything in its right place. Organisation with regard to food is usually done in two places: in the cupboard and in the refrigerator. Boxes are used in both, but more so for dry foods like cereal or mac and cheese. If the user of the fridge in question is fastidious, they might be used to separate leftovers, sauces or chopped ingredients in Tupperware.

Outside of the home, the act of boxing food is usually associated with the act of transporting it. Delicious steaming portions of cart food are quickly packed into a box of some sort, and then sent on their merry way. Leftovers at a restaurant are unceremoniously scraped into styrofoam. Delivered pizza is shovelled into a cardboard box before being stacked in a heat-saving bag. When we were children, perhaps we’d have a sandwich and a juice pack in a plastic box. Yet the box is somehow absent from the lineup of dishes at a just-cooked, sit-down meal. If one were to order that pizza in a restaurant, it would not be served in a box, but on a metal, circular pan. If one were to serve up a meal at home, it would arrive piping hot and on a plate.

The problem with plates is that noodles or rice dishes slide easily off the side. Bowls prevent this problem, as do boxes, but you don’t really find much served in boxes in when you sit down at eating establishments in East Asia.

Except in Japan. Food in a box is normal in every context, from the office lunch (in the form of the bento box) to the comfort dinner (with broiled fish, chicken, eel or what have you) to the exquisite ritualised meal (in stacked jubako boxes at kaiseki). The boxes are sturdy and, depending on the meal, covered in varying degrees of delicate decoration.

I’d come across countless boxed meals – mostly on trains – by the time I got to Kikutei, a tempura restaurant situated in the basement of the TOKIA Tokyo building. However, the realisation didn’t really hit me until my ten-don, or tempura over rice and what is supposed to be the ultimate in greasy convenience, arrived presented in a box covered by a lacquered lid with golden flowers drawn on top. Organisation, with regards to Japanese food, is done within the box.

The fried things in this particular box were just enough, with a peeled shrimp, a strip of green pepper, a triangle of eggplant, a shiitake mushroom, a slice of small orange winter squash (kabocha), and a piece of white fish, laid on a bed of rice like all other tasty Japanese meals that end in “-don.” The pieces were delicately fried and drizzled in a light dressing made of soy sauce, stock and sweet rice wine. Everything was a lot smaller than I was used to, given the plump giant prawns you’d usually get in the U.S., but everything was also carefully considered. Slightly salty, slightly sweet, and breaded enough to make me remember the point of the meal – a fried fix to go with that beer.

Strangely, this was not too far removed from a boxed meal I had earlier in the trip, purchased from Tokyo station and eaten on the train. Marketed as a woman’s bento, each healthy item was put in its healthy place. The rice was partitioned from the boiled vegetables (plus one piece of octopus), which were partitioned from the fishy items (somewhat puzzled as to why octopus was exiled from this category), which were partitioned from the pickled items. Sweet black beans were placed in little muffin papers so that they didn’t actually touch the rice packed into the same compartment – it was a finicky child’s dream come true.

And so the square container becomes serving dish, defender of the separation between grain, protein and greens, and presentation tool all in one. In the case of Japan, it’s not necessary to think outside the box. Sometimes, you can only reach creative extremes within it.

Kikutei
2-7-3 Marunouchi
Metropolis Tokyo Bldg. B1F
Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo
03-3212-7891

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 9:14 am and is filed under Tokyo, travel.