Takenaka makes lunch boxes in the Japaneseist of Japanese ways, the Bento. What we know as the quick, little-of-everything, menu item on a Sushi restaurants midtown lunch special is a physical item in every Japanese citizens backpack. In a world where we’re continually evolving our healthy eating game, these Takenaka lunch boxes make carrying your homemade healthy snacks convenient and simultaniously mega stylish. Next time you pull up a seat at the communal table watch the envy sweep across your coworkers faces when you pull out this beauty. We just hope what you put inside is as impressive as the outside.
More Gear Stuff
Field Skillet
By name it has a contrast that unless it’s 1873 you want nothing to do with it. Field Company’s Field Skillet is aimed at the modern kitchen and the Portlandian, hipster, camping enthusiast. This is to say, carrying a cast iron anything into the “field” ended when horses turned into horsepower. The field skillet does have its place in our modern society and that’s looking cool and saving wrists in your urban kitchen OR looking like a grandfather of hipsters at your next car camping lake weekend. Built to replace the heavy, Lodge skillets of your grandparents hand-me-downs, this modern material replica streamlines the design discarding things like pour spouts and fully casted handles, In a smart, yet retro move, it comes pre-seasoned ready for that Sunday breakfast frittata or that elusive campfire charred hanger steak.
Equal Parts Cookware and Coach
We’ve always been big fans of eating at home. So much so we often recreate our favorite restaurant meals in our home kitchen with fairly good accuracy. The favorite is a solid, full spread, Peter Lugar’s recreation that we get super pumped about, but we digress. Equal Parts is a new cookware company aimed at helping us eat, and cook, more in our kitchens. To aid in this increasingly difficult behavior, considering the ease of food delivery these days, every purchase includes a coach. The coach is accessed through a text chat provided when you receive your products. They dub it “Your friend in the kitchen” which we love because friends who know how to cook are some of the best. Starting up is pretty easy. A simple chef knife runs you $80 with “your friend coach”. You can then work your way up to an entire 20 piece kitchen set. Interesting side note, Equal Parts was a design agency called Gin Lane just a few short months ago. They gave up their clients to focus full time on birthing their own DTC products and brands. A huge move, and that’s coming from an agency owning veteran. With that news, you’re probably wondering what a former design agency knows about making cookware. Apparently a lot. Not surprising they lead with design and decided to shroud their cookware in a sleek matte black. This covers the aluminum and ceramic core. Ceramic instead of Teflon keeps the toxicity at bay while letting the eggs slide away. The aluminum makes for a lighter, and faster to heat, base with the same cooking quality as steel. They finished off each piece with a comfort forward handle and universal lids. We LOVE universal lids. They are by far the hardest thing to store in a kitchen. Less of them means a more organized pan draw. We likey. Enamored with the service we’re anxious to try this first hand. No NYC pop-up store yet so we started with a chef’s knife. We’ll report back on the experience here and on our Insta. Needless to say, we have high hopes.
BBQ Toolbox
My dad was an auto mechanic for 20 years. After that he became a self taught electrical engineer. It’s safe to assume tools and their boxes were a big part of my childhood. To date I have at least 10 different toolboxes. One for electrical, one for plumbing, one for cars, one for the house. The list goes on. The appeal of the BBQ Toolbox is therefore obvious but instead of this container synonymous with work, it’s a beacon for play. Flipping out like an old school True Value gem, the trademark red box reveals two grilling surfaces and a place for your prized sauces and critical grill tools. Summer music festivals are about to get “worked”.
Wasara Compostable Tableware
When I first saw these I was mesmerized. The curves, the way they stack, the pure color, all of it transfixing my eyes even without food on the plates. Compostable, bamboo pulp and inexpensive are not the next words I expected to hear out of Michiyo Tanabe’s mouth when we chatted in her booth at the NY Gift Show. Aside from the unique aesthetics Wasara’s process is extremely refined and…well, good. Bamboo grows extremely fast, meaning it needs to be cut back often. That’s recycle #1. They also use bagasse, a by-product of making sugarcane juice. Most of the 100 million tons is discarded as waste. Michiyo and team uses some of this to soften the bamboo. That’s recycle #2. Finally, because it’s softer than wood pulp it uses less energy to produce the final product. So, use them to make you feel great about helping the planet or reduce waste or recycle materials. We use them because they are gorgeous.