I found this book to be so fun and exciting. I loved the recipes and they seemed like they will be simple to do as well as artistic. I smiled while looking through the photos of the colorful balanced bento boxes. I like that you can use different kinds of boxes and you can be creative with the small meals you put in the boxes. I liked that there were many recipes I just wish there was a photo for every recipe. I want to know how each one is suppose to look. I am thankful it included a history of the boxes and the stables that someone may want to have when making them.

While I'm clearly never going to start dedicating my mornings to making bento boxes, there were some really good tips and recipes in here (plus the bentos pictured look AMAZING). It definitely made me think that I should start putting more effort into my husband's packed lunches, even if just on occasion.

This is a really inspiring and accessible bento cookbook with useful recipes and ideas for Japanese cooking. I’m often intimidated by bento but this makes it seem a lot easier!

Thank you Netgalley/Quarto/Race Point for my ARC.

Bento is a very well curated and developed recipe collection for Japanese style make-ahead lunches. Taken from content originally published in 2018, this reformatted condensed version is due out 1st Sept 2020 from Quarto on their Race Point imprint. It's 160 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is an updated introduction to bento for westerners. Bento can be healthy and tasty with eye appeal, organization, variety, and portion control in one package. This collection also shows that it doesn't need to be very time consuming or difficult.

The introduction includes suggestions and tutorials for basic bento followed by chapters arranged roughly thematically: classic Japanese bento, sushi & onigiri, noodles, popular bento, 10 minute lunches, rice and grain bowls, vegan choices, special occasions and side dishes (and partial recipes).

The recipes have their ingredients listed bullet style in a sidebar. Measurements are given in US standard with metric/SI units in parentheses (yay!). Special tools and ingredients are also listed, along with yields and cooking directions. Most of the ingredients are easily sourced at any moderately well stocked grocery store.

Well written and organized, this could be a fun addition to the lunchbox repertoire. It would also lend itself very well to fans of meal planning or once-a-week-cooking. Most of these recipes make several servings which could easily be used for a week's lunch planning. I've been avoiding buying food at the cafe at work during the pandemic and these recipes have provided good mileage for avoiding boring lunches at work for me.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This was a great introduction to Bento for me. I'm fairly familiar with bento, but haven't made a huge effort to work on bento boxes -- however I think bento lends itself to be a refreshed iteration of a charcuterie board for me, and I'm excited to try to merge the two. While there are a few recipes with ingredients I'd have to be on the hunt for, there are recipes that I'm super happy to make with ingredients I normally have on hand (antipasto bento, quinoa salad bento, etc). #Bento #NetGalley