Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Nom Nom, nom some more
Go to Pacific Beach for next-generation bento
A deceptively simple bento lunch, taken by the beach
I'm a huge fan of bento boxes, and perhaps a huger fan of Supernatural Sandwiches, the seafood specialist in Miramar I consider my favorite sandwich spot in the county. Imagine my excitement when I learned Supernatural executive chef Craig Jimenez is behind a new fast casual spot in Pacific Beach that's caught a lot of buzz since debuting this summer, Nom Nom Bento.
The history of the bento box goes back something like 800 years, and today has mostly come to be associated with black, lacquered trays partitioned to hold different components of a fairly balanced meal. Typically, that means rice, salad, some kind of protein, cooked vegetable, and maybe a couple pieces of sushi.
Colorful characters adorn the walls of Nom Nom
Nom Nom Bento doesn't use partitioned boxes, instead serving dishes packed together in a compostable cardboard bowl. Nom Nom's bentos revolve around the choice of five proteins inspired by various Asian cuisines: Singapore style rotisserie chicken, Korean bulgogi beef, Japanese chashu pork belly, Vietnamese garlic and lemongrass shrimp, and an "aromatic" crispy tofu for vegetarians.
A mural decorates little counter shop Nom Nom Bento
Customers may build a meal from scratch, selecting a protein and drawing from a healthy list of starchy (or leafy) bases, vegetables, and sauces. You may opt for the likes of rice made with chicken broth, rice noodles, or roasted sweet potatoes, for example. And you can add things like garlic peanuts, pickles, daikon radish and carrots, kim chee, and avocado. Sauces include ginger shallot soy, a house sriracha, and fish sauce vinaigrette.
My "build your own" instincts don't always yield the best results, so I chose to start with one of four "signature bentos," ranging in price from $9 to $12. The 9-dollar shibuya pork belly bento is served with toasted sesame sauce and comes standard with a furikake seasoned egg cooked onsen style — effectively between a hard and soft boil. Every bento dish here comes with sautéed green beans and cabbage, and for an extra buck or so I added a helping of sesame wilted spinach to triple down on greens.
Each item tasted great. Three pieces of pork belly were sliced thin, eating like mild, spirals of bacon that took well to the toasted sesame sauce, itself sort of an oily tahini. The fresh vegetables were well cooked. Wilted spinach kept my love of sesame going, and I even enjoyed the garlicky seared green beans, not usually a favorite. Nothing in my bowl skimped on flavor, other than maybe the cabbage garnish.
Most interesting may be the base used in this bento: mashed edamame. I've never encountered this before, and let's just say that now I know what I've been missing. With a consistency closer to hummus than mashed potatoes, the garlicky mashed soybeans were served warm and showed a butter-like richness. Amid what was a very enjoyable lunch, this stuff alone was worth the drive into PB.
I took my bento box a block west to the beach and devoured it, trying each part of the dish individually, in pairs, and all mixed together. Bold flavor met me with each bite, and though every component seemed light on its own, the meal proved filling as a whole. Delicious, affordable, and satisfying: it's worthy of at least three noms.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Nom Nom, nom some more
Go to Pacific Beach for next-generation bento
Nom Nom, nom some more
Go to Pacific Beach for next-generation bento
A deceptively simple bento lunch, taken by the beach
I'm a huge fan of bento boxes, and perhaps a huger fan of Supernatural Sandwiches, the seafood specialist in Miramar I consider my favorite sandwich spot in the county. Imagine my excitement when I learned Supernatural executive chef Craig Jimenez is behind a new fast casual spot in Pacific Beach that's caught a lot of buzz since debuting this summer, Nom Nom Bento.
The history of the bento box goes back something like 800 years, and today has mostly come to be associated with black, lacquered trays partitioned to hold different components of a fairly balanced meal. Typically, that means rice, salad, some kind of protein, cooked vegetable, and maybe a couple pieces of sushi.
Colorful characters adorn the walls of Nom Nom
Nom Nom Bento doesn't use partitioned boxes, instead serving dishes packed together in a compostable cardboard bowl. Nom Nom's bentos revolve around the choice of five proteins inspired by various Asian cuisines: Singapore style rotisserie chicken, Korean bulgogi beef, Japanese chashu pork belly, Vietnamese garlic and lemongrass shrimp, and an "aromatic" crispy tofu for vegetarians.
A mural decorates little counter shop Nom Nom Bento
Customers may build a meal from scratch, selecting a protein and drawing from a healthy list of starchy (or leafy) bases, vegetables, and sauces. You may opt for the likes of rice made with chicken broth, rice noodles, or roasted sweet potatoes, for example. And you can add things like garlic peanuts, pickles, daikon radish and carrots, kim chee, and avocado. Sauces include ginger shallot soy, a house sriracha, and fish sauce vinaigrette.
My "build your own" instincts don't always yield the best results, so I chose to start with one of four "signature bentos," ranging in price from $9 to $12. The 9-dollar shibuya pork belly bento is served with toasted sesame sauce and comes standard with a furikake seasoned egg cooked onsen style — effectively between a hard and soft boil. Every bento dish here comes with sautéed green beans and cabbage, and for an extra buck or so I added a helping of sesame wilted spinach to triple down on greens.
Each item tasted great. Three pieces of pork belly were sliced thin, eating like mild, spirals of bacon that took well to the toasted sesame sauce, itself sort of an oily tahini. The fresh vegetables were well cooked. Wilted spinach kept my love of sesame going, and I even enjoyed the garlicky seared green beans, not usually a favorite. Nothing in my bowl skimped on flavor, other than maybe the cabbage garnish.
Most interesting may be the base used in this bento: mashed edamame. I've never encountered this before, and let's just say that now I know what I've been missing. With a consistency closer to hummus than mashed potatoes, the garlicky mashed soybeans were served warm and showed a butter-like richness. Amid what was a very enjoyable lunch, this stuff alone was worth the drive into PB.
I took my bento box a block west to the beach and devoured it, trying each part of the dish individually, in pairs, and all mixed together. Bold flavor met me with each bite, and though every component seemed light on its own, the meal proved filling as a whole. Delicious, affordable, and satisfying: it's worthy of at least three noms.
Comments