MIKADO
10350 - 109 St., 425-8096
**** (out of five)

So far as I know, the Japanese didn’t invent lunch, but they may very well have perfected it in the bento box–that lacquered wooden tray of delights that just about every sushi restaurant offers by way of noon-hour repast. Within its compartments, you can usually count on finding a selection of makki, sushi or sashimi, teriyaki-seasoned meat, salad, pickles or ginger, tempura, rice–all the things you love Japanese food for. One website I consulted claimed that train stations in Japan, where bento boxes are evidently abundant, shell out some 12 million bento’d meals a day.

Though I’d had some fine evening sushi feasts at Mikado, I’d never thought to stop in for lunch until a friend suggested we meet there midday. I was pleased to find that Mikado’s lunches contributed even more variety to the range of bento fare in my neighbourhood, so I can go back a few times before exhausting the novelty.

Seated in a tatami room with a basket of hot towels and a pot of hot tea–why do Japanese restaurants only provide the kind that leak all over the table as you’re pouring?–I called for the A-3, a bento box that promised beef shogayaki, chicken yakitori, barbecued shrimp, salmon teriyaki, rice, and salad all in one place for the low, low price of $10.95. There are at least six more bento packages on the menu, including one vegetarian option, that offer similar variety at comparable prices.

The great thing about a bento box is that it lets you try small quantities of lots of things, rather than a monolithic meal centrepiece with a starchy side. The A-3 was a textbook example, and I alternated bites of each item represented, cleansing my palate with rice as I veered between sweet and salty, juicy and crunchy, beefy and chickeny, salmony and shrimpy. The unifying element was a reliance on miso-based sauces that were drizzled over the beef, shrimp and salad. Each of the meats was presented on a bed of shredded cabbage, which blended with its sauce for an impromptu coleslaw to finish it all off.

My favourite bento element in this box was the beef shogayaki. Sometimes I suspect that the beef in bento boxes is not of the highest quality and has slid down the palatability scale from entree to heavily-seasoned lunch item over time. But this beef was tender and bore none of the coppery sheeniness I’ve seen staring back at me from other bentos. It was doused with the aforementioned creamy sauce and sprinkled with sunflower seeds. Next to it were my grilled skewers of shrimp (with strips of pepper and onion) and chicken (with lengths of green pepper) that made me want to run out and buy a hibachi.

The sampling of teriyaki salmon was only a few bites in size, yet satisfying, its bright pink flesh dense and slick with teriyaki sauce. Breaking it apart with my chopsticks, I scooped it over the bowl of rice I’d been provided on the side and shoveled it (daintily I might add) into my maw. Overall the bento didn’t constitute a huge pile of food, but the assortment and quality somehow coalesced into a sense of abundance, and it was certainly more than enough eats to keep me going through the afternoon.

Visit Mikado’s website at www.mikadorestaurant.com, where you can take a virtual tour of the premises, browse their featured entrees, read testimonials from more cultivated palates than my own, and watch a cheerful animated shrimp float across the top banner to the strains of traditional Japanese music. That ought to sell you.