Take Home Frozen Meals - Really?

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When we first started Purple Peanuts Japanese Cafe in Oct 2010 the Business Plan was always to do traditional Japanese food but with a twist. We didn't want to a Ramen cafe, Izakaya or sushi cafe. 

 We loved  Japanese Convenience store food like all their Grab n Go packs or the  Bento / Ekiben found in their huge fridges.  

We also loved the Depachika  (depato = department stores) and Chika (basement) frozen food. This was where the regular Japanese would buy a mixture of ready to eat bento & frozen take home meals which allowed them the freedom to make easy meals at home during the week without having to do extensive prep or go back again to the Depachika again.

So we now have our key meals using Fish, Pork, Chicken, Tofu, Curry, Karaage etc but we also include sides to these dishes that are not  just "fillers".

Our sides in our meals are often traditional Covienance store or Depachika nibbles. These meals are prepared by our Japanese chef Akira. Things like dashi infused eggplant, simmered shiitake stock pumpkin, blow torched edamame & Gomoku Mame soybeans with mixed vegies in a sweet stock are just some of our Bento sides.

Its taken a long time but Covid has prompted us to complete what we originally intended to do 10 years ago.