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| - After driving past this place on my way to work everyday, I had been dying to try it. Little did I know that this great mom n' pop bento shop is chock full of hawaiian-japanese food tastiness served with quite the aloha spirit!
Rice Trax offers up a DIY bento-box menu where you pick a meat (vegetable, chicken, beef, or shrimp), a cooking style (battered, katsu, grilled, or mixed), pick your veggies for your fried rice (or choose steamed rice if you'd like), and then your sauce for dipping (teriyaki, katsu, garlic, sweet chili, korean). OR you can just choose one of their at-the-ready bentos such as the Garlic Bento, Mochiko Bento, Fuikake Bento, or Katsu Curry Bento.
I chose the mochiko bento, while my dining partner chose to make one himself. My bento came out with 4different kinds of meat and enough rice to be able to split with another person and still feel satisfied afterward. The cooler thing that I'm jonesing to try next time I visit? Their kimchee fried rice, which you can have instead of the regular rice options for an additional $2.25. You can also sub macaroni salad for $1.50, but I think I might just try that on the side one day since I really love my rice.
My bento was yummy, and I love that they offer brown rice as an option. My beef teriyaki was delicious, tender, and moist, which is not something that's easy to find in places that sell teriyaki anything. My dining partner got the teriyaki dipping sauce, which tasted homemade. That alone is something I'd come back for, as I haven't been able to find a teriyaki sauce I've found tolerable since I was a little girl in Hawaii. It was awesome: not too sweet or thick, and just the right balance of salty.
The other thing I have to try next time are yakitori sticks. They're about $1.50 each. For $8.95 for any of the at-the-ready bentos, this place is priced pretty amazingly for some damn good, down home Hawaiian food.
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