Takenaka: Takeout Bento and Chirashi

Never has takeout food looked or tasted so good. Such are the thoughts that filled the minds of many people (including myself) as images of impressive bento boxes, chirashi bowls and sushi filled up instafeeds for the last few months. Takenaka is strictly takeout focused, working out of a commissary kitchen in East Vancouver, but also runs a food truck and offers pickup from Konbiniya Japan Centre on Robson Street in downtown.

We placed an order for pickup at Konbiniya (note that there are different menu items available from each location). If you’re into Japanese snacks, Konbiniya is a sweet place as you can find a lot of Japanese snack items as well as Japanese grocery items here.

The Kaiseki Bento ($30) is Takenaka’s self-described “most exquisite” bento box and includes 9 kinds of omakase tapas (in other words, you never really know what you’re going to get). From what I could tell, ours included grilled salmon, pickled eggplant/zucchini, chicken karaage, tuna tataki, beef, seasoned half boiled egg, stewed pork belly, prawn tempura, and a slice of sushi.

Each item was well prepared and looked beautiful in the bento box. The only downside is that some of the items are probably more meant to be eaten “hot” such as the karaage… but that’s kind of to be expected of takeout fare. We wound up heating up some of the items and that really made a difference.

We also ordered the Unagi Bara Chirashi Bowl ($27). I could stare all day at the colourful mix of grilled unagi, snow crab, radish spouts, shiso marinated kelp, ikura, and tobiko spread on top of sushi rice. On the very bottom was also a layer of sweet egg omelet. Everything in this bowl just screams out happiness and I was surprised that the rice was even still light and fluffy.

While we were checking out Konbiniya, we noticed that they also had some pre-made maki rolls from Takenaka available so we picked up the Snow Crab Roll ($9). Seriously, for takeout food this is really next level. The roll is stuffed with snow crab, avocado, kinshi-egg (shredded tamago), and tobiko.

Overall, the food from Takenaka is super fresh and tasty. Oh, and even the miso soup that came with our order was so flavourful (we did have to heat it up after we brought it home).

1370A E Georgia St
Vancouver, BC

https://takenakavancouver.com/