Boxed love served up at Tokyo Sushi and Steakhouse

A new place opens; new food is cooked; a new article is written. Ah, it's like a much more pedestrian circle of life, and I enjoy it. This week I ate at a new restaurant in Jackson — Tokyo Sushi and Steakhouse of Japan.

Tokyo Sushi just opened last week, and I couldn't wait to go, so I didn't. I want to introduce you to the humble (and delicious) bento box. The bento box has the humblest of beginnings. The origin of the word bento means "convenient." History tells us that anyone who was lunching outside of the home in fifth-century Japan, such as hunters or farmers, packed a lunch to take with them in a sack or a box. The boxes were originally farmer's seed boxes and had many different compartments. Into these compartments usually went rice, vegetables and fish, all neatly split up. After World War I, only wealthy children were given bento boxes for school, because those less fortunate could no longer afford to make the once humble box meals. After school lunches were introduced into Japanese schools, the bento fell by the wayside for a while. That all changed in the 1980s, the age of TV dinners, when people fell in love with bentos all over again for their convenience. Later, artists used them to create meals that looked like popular and interesting mainstream characters from TV shows.

Now, bento boxes have become an expression of love. In a society where it is difficult to put deep feelings into words, actions have a lot of weight. The bento is a simple way to show someone that you love them. Was your loved one's bento beautifully prepared with care, with many different colors and flavors, pleasing to the eye and the tongue? Or was it just colorless rice? Both of these bentos send different messages in a subtle way that all but yells. I feel that the bento box is the perfect expression of love, and I'm going to start campaigning to make it the food of love, in this, the month of love.

Enough about the history of bentos. Let's talk about how Tokyo Sushi makes theirs. Ordering a bento lunch or dinner is the absolute best way to get an amazing sampling of what this restaurant offers. Not only is it extremely affordable, it is also a generous amount of food that is presented beautifully. With a bento dinner, you will get your choice of protein (I chose teriyaki chicken, but I was tempted by the shrimp tempura ... maybe next time), a bowl of soup (onion or miso), a salad (go for the house-made ginger dressing, love it), one spring roll (theirs is fried, wrapped in thin rice paper, crunchy and delicious), one gyoza (delightful dumplings fried and filled with pork), eight pieces of California roll sushi (rice on the outside, cucumber, crab and avocado in the inside, no raw fish for this one), and fried rice. See, a lot of food! Mine also came with a dollop of what the server told me was seaweed salad. It really was seaweed, seasoned with sesame seeds, herbs and oil. I wasn't too sure about it at first, but the ocean saltiness and different texture won me over by the end.

The teriyaki chicken was the best I've ever had, wonderfully smoky and obviously grilled, with a perfect sauce that stuck to the chicken and coated the rice. The salad with ginger dressing was crisp, cold and refreshing, a perfect complement to its companion onion soup, which was a rich clear broth with small pieces of fried onion scattered throughout. The California roll was flawless, with perfectly cut ingredients. It is a perfect starter sushi, and if it's your first time to try, make sure to put a little dollop of the green wasabi paste on top along with a small slice of the pale pickled ginger. The flavors are unbeatable.

Part of the bento box dinner at Tokyo Sushi, the house salad and onion soup serve to whet the appetite and hint at what's to come.Submitted by Rebecca LaClair

And what did the presentation tell me about how Tokyo Sushi felt about me? It told me that I was welcome there, that I was valued, and yes, maybe that I was even loved. The bento box was beautifully arranged with obvious care and attention to detail, and I did pause a moment just to take it in before even touching an eating utensil.

You, too, can choose love this month by visiting Tokyo Sushi and Steakhouse at 1815 East Jackson Boulevard in Jackson.