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Restaurant Review: Bento Café, Gainesville Restaurant ReviewBento Café, GainesvilleBy MIKE WALKER Bento Café is an interesting business: a pan-Asian place that is focused on sushi but also provides a diverse array of traditional bento boxes containing dishes from various Asian nations. While bento boxes are a Japanese cultural custom for lunch, Bento has adapted them to Chinese, Thai,
Bento opened its first location (the one being reviewed here) in 2003 in the Royal Park Shopping Center which contains a variety of other restaurants and is right next to the Royal Park Theatre, so there's an ample draw of people to the shopping center. It is a place that brings forth fond memories for me, being the locus of a couple first dates and other meetings, not to mention a restaurant which bridges the difficult divide between fast, inexpensive food and real quality. To not give a false impression, Bento is not fast food as most of us think of such, and I would not venture to call it "fast" really at all. However, the service is quick and it's rare that you're left waiting very long for your food to make its way over to your table. Part of this is because you order at the front and after placing your order seat yourself either in the indoor dining area or on the patio in nice weather. Normally, I have ordered mainly sushi combinations and these arrive with haste from the sushi chef unless Bento is very, very, busy (not uncommon on a Friday night). The interior of Bento is done up in postmodern, streamlined metal and a lot of blue accents and lighting-a nice touch that makes the place feel more like you're in Tokyo's Harajuku district than a suburban shopping center in Florida. Even cuter still is the fact that when they constructed the Archer Road location, red became the theme color instead of blue and while the Newberry Road Bento serves Pepsi (think blue label) the Archer Road one serves Coke (with its red label)! Having not yet visited the Orlando location, I cannot speak to its colorways, but I bet it's just as innovative and exciting. In general the food at Bento is also very exciting and pleasing. Recently, the prices have increased slightly but they are still fair and below average for restaurant sushi and the portions of the bento boxes and noodle bowls are ample. The standard bento boxes are $6.95 while the sushi bento boxes are $7.95, the rice bowls (with various toppings of meat or chicken) are $6.25 and the noodle bowls (also with toppings), $6.50. The bento boxes come with the featured dish-say, Mongolian Beef or Ginger Shrimp-plus rice, stir-fried noodles, green beans, and a lettuce salad with ginger dressing plus a small dessert bite such as a cookie or tiny piece of sheet cake. For the price, it certainly seems like a good deal to me and I have never found the quality of the food in the bento boxes to be lacking, either, with the possible exception of the Roast Duck which was a bit too tough and fatty. The Ginger Shrimp, Teriyaki Beef, and Red Curry Beef are all exceptional and dishes I've tried a number of times. The Teriyaki Beef is always highly-seasoned (but never overly salty), tender, and moist while the Ginger Shrimp has enough ginger taste to make the dish interesting but not so much to overpower the delicate nature of the shrimp. There used to be a great bento box composed of gyoza (Japanese traditional dumplings with pork filling) and while the gyoza are still availible as a side-dish, the box has been sadly removed from the menu . . . although at times I have conned the staff into making it for me anyway. Bento's sushi is better quality than I had expected given their prices. Gainesville is not a great city for sushi in general: though we have a number of sushi bars, how many are that good? Having lived in San Francisco perhaps I have too high expectations but still, Tatu has a lukewarm repute for their sushi and Dragonfly, once considered probably the best in town, has recently had critical remarks thrown its way from a number of my friends and even in online reviews. Bento is far less expensive than Dragonfly and franky, their nigiri (individual pieces of fish on rice) seems to be of about the same level of quality. Their rolls are certainly very good, but nigiri is a more pure test of the real quality of fish used and I have to say Bento passed that test for me. Like a lot of American sushi restaurants, Bento offers a panopoly of rolls with more emphasis on unique ingredients and combinations than the sparse and delicate tastes of individual types of fish as would be more traditional to Japanese sushi practice. Florida sushi standards such as Mexican Roll (tempura shrimp in a sauce and rice) and Spicy Tuna Roll are favorites at Bento, as are their house rolls which often include, it seems, just about everything except the kitchen sink. The noodle bowls are not exceptional, but certainly they fill the role they are slated to fill. The Szechuan Beef Noodle Bowl is spicy and contains beef just as tender as that found in the Teriyaki Beef bento box. Noodle bowls are in general a good option if not hungry enough for the larger bento boxes and are also enticing for their warmth in cooler weather. Bento also offers boba milk teas, an Asian fad in flavored tea-drinks which is actually worth outliving its trendy status and becoming an actual addition to menus. Boba tea is a green or black tea-based drink made in a blender with other flavors (such as chocolate, coconut, or apple) and milk or soy milk then, once this is prepared, tapioca "pearls" are stirred into the resulting slushie-like drink. Some people are pretty addicted to boba tea while others don't seem to care for it it much: personally, I like it now and then but from the devotion I've seen to it by customers at Bento, it certainly has its rabid fans in Gainesville. Bento also carries beer, including Japanese beers, and saki and plum wine. All in all, Bento has impressed me with its ability to offer quality food at good prices and to do so in a genre of food-including sushi-which is not always easy to get "right". The depth and scope of Asian foods encompassed by Bento's menu is in itself impressive and if I had to choose just one Asian place to dine in Gainesville, Bento would probably be it. The restaurant can get busy at times but the staff always appears to be doing their best to serve all their customers quickly and the quality of the food never seems to suffer. 3832 West Newberry Road Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Major credit cards accepted. MIKE WALKER is a writer and journalist based in Gainesville, Florida, who writes mainly about natural history and ecology. He is also an avid mountain biker and skateboarder. All photos in this article by the author. Mike may be reached at: cloudrace@prontomail.com |
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