We’ve been covering the coming of this tiny eatery on Second Street SE since last fall. That’s when the space’s previous iteration as Atomic Burrito closed and the business was sold, and Restaurantarama for one was really bummed. For such an itty bitty place, Atomic was generous with the portions as well as the vibe—thanks to its late night music scene—and its demise left a big hole in our hearts. But now, after much anticipation (and a few premature opening date predictions posted in this column), the little shoebox of a shop is once again hopping under new ownership and a new menu. We stopped in for lunch last Tuesday after The Box’s soft opening weekend, and we found one of those owners—Chas Webster—happily exhausted. “I slept here last night,” he told us. Turns out, we’re not the only ones who’ve been stalking the place for weeks, just lying in wait for the brown paper to come off the windows. Webster says the place got “slammed” when it quietly opened for dinner and drinks the previous Friday night, despite his purposeful lack of publicity, and those first busy nights didn’t give him much time to recover and prepare for starting the lunch menu on Monday. And of course, first weekends are always full of fun little glitches—Webster says that before The Box’s menus could be printed for its inaugural meals, the designer’s computer crashed. A new design had to be created and printed on the fly.
 You say goodbye rice and beans, and I say hello noodles: The old Atomic Burrito space is now home to The Box, serving sushi, dumplings and other Asian fare. |
But while Webster might have looked a little worse for all of the opening-weekend wear, the place looked cool as a cucumber, with its hip, urban, sushi bar décor. A giant rendering of Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid—which Webster says a friend of his painted—hangs prominently behind the bar. It’s a clever image, considering that many of us (yours truly included) received our first educations in Asian culture from the Ralph Macchio flick, and the playful Miyagi mug gives us a sense that this place doesn’t take itself (or its sushi prices for that matter—a four-piece order is $3.75) too seriously.
The chow, however, is seriously good business. Besides sushi, The Box offers Asian salads, soups, lettuce wraps, dumplings and noodles, much of it served in—aha—little boxes. For the noodle boxes, you get to build your own, starting with a choice of noodle, then sauce, then a skewer (beef, chicken, pork, veggie or tofu) and finally add-ons such as Thai basil, cilantro or chopped peanuts for 50 cents each. We tried the green tea soba with pan-Asian pesto and ginger-and-sesame-marinated tofu, and we also tried the lo mein with peanut sauce and garlic-and-thyme-marinated chicken. All of it was packed with flavor. And the ketchup—good God, the ketchup that they serve with panko-encrusted onion rings is infused with ginger, which made us want to eat it with a spoon.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to try any of the cocktails during our “working” lunch, but we’ll definitely be going back for the Watermelon Julep and the Ginger Lemon Drop.
If you can’t tell already, a little hole in hearts has finally been filled.
Welcome back!
Do you know how we know that spring is on its way? Because the Hamdingers cart is back on the Downtown Mall! Can’t you just see the skies getting sunnier already? Weather permitting, of course, Patrick Critzer is rolling out his gourmet foodmobile this week. As for his winter break, Critzer tells us he spent it doing “research” in the Caribbean. “I was checking out the street food in the Dominican Republic.” Critzer also tells us he’s adding some new menu items to his soulful street fare. He’s working with the folks at Seafood at West Main to bring high quality seafood to his cart, and he’s also considering adding some Cajun-style gumbo to his on-the-go grub list. Good food is in the air!
Got some restaurant scoop? Send tips to restaurantarama@c-ville.com or call 817-2749, Ext. 48.
