How Japan’s humble onigiri took over lunchtimes around the world

I t is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only.

“It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out.

Bongo, opened in 1960 by Ukon’s drum-playing husband, sells as many as 1,500 rice balls a day. Its customers are a mixture of loyal locals, inquisitive diners from out of town and, increasingly, a foreign clientele eager to taste the inspiration for the global boom in onigiri – triangles of warm, lightly salted rice embellished with a topping or filling and, more often than not, wrapped in crisp nori seaweed.

The queues outside Bongo are as legendary as its choice of 57 toppings, from the popular sujiko – salmon roe – and umeboshi plum to the more unconventional bacon and cheese, all accompanied by pickled cucumber and radish and a bowl of miso soup.

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