Monday, July 25th, 2011
It's been 5 months since I last posted about Bimi Bento, our budding little business. I had grand plans of getting the bento business underway and somehow we took a detour. The incubator kitchen program we applied to back in January turned us down because they thought we could do it on our own. They thought we had the skills and the resources, except after that slap in the face, we lost motivation. Motivation, it seems, was the key ingredient to get the engine started.
Recently, we've managed to build up just enough motivation to apply to a food fair. The food fair is coming up in three weeks so we did a little test recipe this past weekend. We're serving up hiyashi chuka (cold ramen noodle salad). Hiyashi chuka isn't exactly bento food, but due to strict health department rules and regulations, coupled with the fact that we don't want to deal with propane (blowing things up would be bad), we decided that cold food was the way to go. Bi invited her co-workers and friends over for a barbecue, enticing them with lots of grilled meat. They were served barbecue with a side of various types of hiyashi chuka so that we could solicit feedback. Most people couldn't really tell the difference between the types of noodles we used but they all gave us positive feedback.
The next day, I decided to test the noodles again, given the feedback that we received the previous day. It seems that the chu-futo-chijiremen (yea what a name huh?) is the most authentic noodle for hiyashi chuka. Slight alterations were made to the sauce and now we're ready to place an order on the noodles.
Hurray! Now it's back to businessy stuff. Gotta rent a tent and create banners and all the rest of it.
Hiyashi Chuka Test 1 Complete:
Hiyashi Chuka Test 2 Complete:
