Midtown Lunch

It’s getting to that time of year when the weather can make that generic deli across the street suddenly looks more appealing than your favorite cart a few blocks away. That’s when delivery comes in handy, and if you’re a fan of Japanese bento lunches, then you might want to check out Fuji Catering. I hadn’t heard of it until Lunch’er Kevin pointed it out in his profile. Who doesn’t like having cheap food delivered to them?The ordering process is pretty simple (and explained here), but basically you send them an e-mail and they tell you if they deliver to where you work. I tried ordering a single bento and was denied, but I’m told that if you’re a regular customer they’ll do it. Otherwise there’s a minimum order of three bentos, so you might want to round up a few friends or co-workers. It seems like they deliver pretty early downtown (our order came before 11 a.m.) so you might have to smell your food for a little while before you get to eat it.

I rounded up a couple of co-lunchers to place my order and we ended up with a couple of fish dishes and a fried hamburger curry bento. As you can see from the menu above, unless you read Japanese you’re not going to know exactly what you’re getting except for the main meat item. But that’s the fun of a bento right? They post the menu a week at a time, with three or four bentos offered each day for $6.50 or $7. They change all the time and are mainly deliciously unhealthy, but they also usually have some fish options if you don’t feel like eating curry katsu.

The hamburger curry was essentially a hamburger coated in panko and deep fried with the cup of Japanese-style curry on the side. My co-luncher reported that the hamburger was bland on its own and definitely needed the curry.

The bento I got had a small piece of yellowtail saikyo miso and the surprise addition of  what were mini burgers that could have been made from either ground turkey or pork. Whatever species they were, it was delicious. Other items in my bento included spaghetti with some sort of pink creamy sauce on it, a sliver of omelet, some vegetables and a lot of rice.

The other bento had broiled salmon, beef yakiniku and a lot of the same things as the yellowtail bento. There was also something that looked like squid, but was not. As my co-luncher said after tasting it a couple of times, “it’s definitely meat and not vegetable.”

If you’re the kind of person who has to know what you’re eating, this may not be the best place to get food from as there’s a lot of “I have no idea what this is, but it tastes good,” involved.

The price is definitely right, and if you work downtown it’s probably the cheapest bento you’re going to find and they serve a lot of Japanese items that you can’t easily find.

Fuji Catering, (212) 219-9955 or (212) 941-1171, www.fuji-catering.com