BENTO BOSS: West Coast Bento owner Dan Bair. IMAGE: Chrisryanphoto.com

We have no reservations about Big Dan’s West Coast Bento, the 15-year veteran of the Uptown Shopping Center, known as much for its affable owner as for the quality of its meat. It reopened this January across from Food Front on Northwest Thurman Street, not far from WW’s world headquarters. Any new place to get a cheap lunch in our ritzy neighborhood is greeted with glee by our staff—along with the much larger workforces at nearby Laika and Con-Way—but we were overjoyed to discover that Big Dan’s bento is, if you’ll pardon my catgirl-like enthusiasm, super-oishii!

Here’s the deal: If you want anything but chicken, call your order in 25 minutes ahead of time. Then you wait in line outside Dan’s tiny basement kitchen, which smells like a swimming pool, to pick up your $5 bento box, packed with a fat skewer of your preferred meat and more than a pound of rice. Chicken, beef, lamb, shrimp, curried vegetables—it’s all $5. An extra buck will get you a trio of potstickers or shumai dumplings, or a surprisingly large pork bao. Lug the box back to your office and dig in, pausing only to pump your fist in the air and shout, “Big Dan!”

Just don’t dawdle over the menu. Or ask about vegetarian options besides the curried veggies. Or ask if the curried veggies are spicy. Of course they’re spicy, doofus. And if meat isn’t your bag, why are you in the bento basement, anyway? Just head on back to Food Front, kid. Big Dan doesn’t suffer fools gladly.