Bento Box review: Yagura
I have to admit, I was a little skeptical when I got this $6.50 Bento box from the Japanese grocery store Yagura. Seriously, there’s a sizable piece of salted salmon (shiozake) and it’s only $6.50! What gives? It ended up being a lot better than I expected.
I started eating from the top left: Harumaki (Japanese spring roll) with tamagoyaki (Omelette) on a bed of yakisoba (Stir-fried noodles). The spring roll was crunchy but a little too dry and greasy for my personal taste, I also don’t think it was homemade. The omelette was not as mushy as I like it but it was alright. The stir fried noodles were fine although like the spring roll, a bit oily.
I washed the taste of the noodles with some gari (pickled ginger, the pink stuff in the compartment to the right) and proceeded to the sweet pepper and onion confit (bottom right) and surprise the pickled ginger and the confit were both homemade and delicious even though the confit was a little overcooked.
Nothing remarkable about the rice, conventionally topped with sesame salt (gomashio) and a pickled plum (umeboshi).
The salted salmon was moist but again, a little too oily and since I felt there was a deficit of vegetables in this lunch box, I ate the one piece of broccoli and the bed of blanched cabbage.
Overall, it definitely wasn’t the best bento lunch I ever had but for $6.50, who’s complaining?
Yagura is located at 24 E. 41st Street, New York, NY 10017. (212) 679-3777.
