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Apologies for the cliche (techie waxing rhapsodic about food) but just had the best delivered lunch ever, clearly created by someone who had a level of product obsessiveness which would do any company proud:
The meal: garlic fried rice, fried egg, sliced pork roast.
This is a fairly common bento in Japan and most places would serve it room temperature or lukewarm in a single layer flat bento box.
But this chef was not satisfied with that. Oh no.
This is a fairly common bento in Japan and most places would serve it room temperature or lukewarm in a single layer flat bento box.
But this chef was not satisfied with that. Oh no.
It instead arrives in a multi-layer plastic enclosure, and if that was not custom-ordered somebody clearly spent several afternoons mixing and matching cups, bowls, and bags because the fit was *exact.*
The bottom layer of the bowl held the rice and egg. Immediately atop the egg was a plastic enclosure which doubled as a lid and separate enclosure for the meat. The meat was insulated in aluminum foil in half of that enclosure, wrapped in a semi up to keep the other half dry.
The other half had an open cup of fried garlic and a single serving squirt bottle of their house sauce.
Followed by the top of the top enclosure, which sealed both it and the outer container, with two tabs (one for popping the top container off the bottom and one for opening).
Followed by the top of the top enclosure, which sealed both it and the outer container, with two tabs (one for popping the top container off the bottom and one for opening).
And the food was laid at the door on a piece of paper, and I could practically hear the chef saying “I did not go to this length for temperature control for you to put my dish on uninsulated concrete. Do you feel me?”
It arrived hot and sublime, setup was almost instant (and interestingly for something which did take executing three steps in order, was sufficiently intuitive that even I didn’t need labeled instructions), and flavors stayed pleasingly distinct throughout.
The marketer in me cries for an insert because clearly it’s worlds better than anything I’ve ever had on UberEats and why leave it to chance whether a user remembers it, but I guess their thought is that they’re competing *entirely* on product quality.
Bold, but plausible.
Bold, but plausible.
Anyhow: “Pound-ya Roppongi” in UberEats if you happen to live in Tokyo. Their top item; garlic rice and steak 80g.
About $20 (plus whatever Uber charges/you contribute to restaurant/driver) so a premium on a Tokyo lunch, but very very worth every yen.
About $20 (plus whatever Uber charges/you contribute to restaurant/driver) so a premium on a Tokyo lunch, but very very worth every yen.
In addition to my normally high level of regard for appreciation of craft in Japan, I think this is a really, really good example of a problem we run into in software frequently: designing for the constraints of the user experience.
We see this often in first generation mobile apps, whose design brief is “Do everything the web version did, but poorly on a really small screen, rather than intuiting that the user has different needs when mobile.”
This just wasn’t the delivery experience for a restaurant meal.
This just wasn’t the delivery experience for a restaurant meal.
It was someone, with deep understanding of cooking and restaurant logistics, who designed a meal to be delivered and final-assembled by the customer.
