Asian Box — Restaurant in Burlingame

It's always great to see a new place with fairly healthy vegetarian options. Asian Box is yet another build-your-own style order-at-the-counter restaurant. A box consists of a base (jasmine rice, brown rice, chilled rice noodles or Asian salad), protein, toppings and sauce. All boxes also include sauce tossed vegetables.

The only vegetarian protein option is tofu, which has a coconut curry flavor. I had this on brown rice and all the toppings (except fresh jalapeno). For the sauce, I selected Miss Jones' Sriracha. All the ingredients seem quite fresh and the sauces are pretty tasty. I washed it all down with a Vietnamese chicory coffee. It's cold brew rather than drip, but it's still pretty good.

The company also seems to be committed to protecting the environment. All their packaging is either compostable...

They state it’s a Vietnamese street food restaurant, but they’re nothing similar to the cuisine they claimed. Not even close. The food was very bland. We ordered Fresh Spring rolls, one Banh Mi (I forgot the name because it was so tasteless) and Grandma’s chicken pho. Everything is very plain, even the spring rolls.

When I looked around because the food was so bored, I realized no Vietnamese customers besides us. That said a lot. This is another Americanized Vietnamese food. Now I knew why the Vietnamese restaurant in San Mateo is always packed with Vietnamese and the waitlist is so damn long, because they are more genuine...

I've tried Chicken Curry (I guess it's a Thai style coconut curry) and Shrimp Roll (and I guess it's a Vietnamese style rice noodle cold roll). The ingredients seems to be high quality as they advertised and I loved that part. The flavor is good, but it's somewhat different from what I've expected. I think I've expected more authentic asian tastes. If you can accept it as a new style of American Asian foods with high quality ingredients, then I think it's for you :) I probably try another one next time, but I should set my...