Ya Bento

I wish I could give here negative stars! It is worst place to get your tofu soup ever!!! Place avoid this place!

I would say that their chicken curry is just about the most revolting curry dish that I have ever had.
It was also a first for me, as I am not sure that I have ever had giant slices of zucchini in my curry before. Just a note to the owners: raw onion in chicken curry is quite disgusting. This will be my first and last time dining here.

I always come here and get their bento meal. You get a ton of food for $ 10 — along with your main entrée you get at least a small side salad and 4 other small side dishes plus soup and a can of soda. So I can get two days worth of lunches out of this meal!
I order online so that I don’t have to deal with the lunch rush.
The food is not bad for what it is. This is food court food so don’t expect fancy stuff. So far I like the sweet and spicy chicken, the veggie katsu is alright, and the chicken teriyaki is not the best. The staff is always friendly and courteous.

I think the people who work here are extremely nice, but the food just straight up sucks.
I have had:
–chicken katsu
–spicy chicken
–udon
–various bento
–curry
–california roll
Just nothing taste good. The katsu stands out to me as the worse katsu I have ever had. The meat has been punch and thin out so badly you feel like you’re just eating crispy batter. To the human eye, I have trouble identifying the meat verse all the deep fried batter.
The spicy chicken… I feel angry when I think about it. The spicy chicken is just balls of deep fried batter douse in sauce.
Oh god, you wonder how this place stays open. Lucky for Ya Bento they are located in a food court surrounded by a bunch of tech companies. I even find myself gravitating towards this place even though I KNOW how mediocre the food is. There isn’t many options for asian food. It’s either this or the nasty chinese place and the half decent korean place.

The owners are very friendly and have many specials that change occasionally. My favorite dish was marinated fried chicken

I work around this area. This is my first choice for lunch. I love the spicy and sweet crispy chicken. The sushi is not good. It’s very fresh.

Slightly overpriced and the food is average. The tipoff for me was when they listed «shrimp katsu» but gave you tempura instead.
After my initial review, the owner was quick to reply, so I will give them the benefit of being new under their current ownership. I will say that the diversity of their menu definitely caught my attention. I will be coming back to give them another try sometime soon.

I stopped by here since the line for Flamebroiler was too long and wanted a chicken teriyaki bowl. I grabbed my lunch here instead to go. When I got back to my office and opened up my lunch, the chicken looked pale and rubbery. I cut into a piece and it was slightly pink! I threw the food into our office microwave thinking I could cook it a bit more. The chicken pieces in the middle were still pink! The chicken was not cooked at all. I should have taken it back but I couldn’t leave the office again. I threw the whole meal away. Will never go back.

This place gets busy at lunch time! WOW!
The prices are decent and so is the food. I was pleasantly surprised when I ordered the side order of the spicy chicken that it came with a side salad. I love Kimchi Fried rice, theirs did not have enough Kimchi on it for me.
The portion sizes were pretty decent too. I have had their Chicken Yakisoba and ended up with quite a bit of leftovers to take home. (Score for me, I did’t have to cook dinner that night!)
The service was friendly, my wait time could have been better — part of that was my fault for choosing to grab food right at lunch time when everyone else is also doing the same thing.

Walked in to the Sorrento Food Court with all the ‘take-​out’ style restaurants.
After pondering which place to pick from, decided to try this place as I saw Tofu Soup meal combo displayed out in the front.
Price was reasonably cheap and I was very surprised with the amount of food I received.
They had other Bento box items which I will definitely come back to try next time I am back in the food court.
Outside parking gets full fast and I would strongly suggest the indoor parking garage as they are more spacious for anyone who does not like their cars getting dinged.

good place to go for lunch~ the bento boxes have variety of choices and the staff are friendly!
I recommend the beef bento combo!

I ordered the chicken teriyaki bento box. Not sure if it’s chicken. Choking on the rice. Washing it down with a free miso. Lady behind the counter is nice.
Update — the owner of this Ya Bento reached out and asked me to come back. I told her I would. She let me know that she just opened and they were working the kinks out. I have to say that the sample was good.

When Ya just opened, the service was great, and the food was great. Although you pay more than $ 9 (incl. Tax) for a lunch, I thought it was worth it. Today I went there to get teriyaki chicken Bento Box and I was super disappointed. I’d never go back there again.
The food quality is a joke. The side dish was soggy 2 pieces of tiny tempra, and 1 tamago-​yaki (baked egg). And my salad was just lettuces and 2 slices of oranges. My chicken was ok. It comes with a cup of miso soup but I would never pay for $ 9.50 for this meal. Other food courts vendors were providing better services and cheaper food. Why bother?
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Oh another thing: I ordered my food as «take out.» The Asian lady at the counter didn’t pack my box. She just gave me a plastic bag. So I packed MY OWN F. OOD!!! And the store was not crowded at all. So she was too lazy to pack my food?

Cute girl behind the counter seemed very disinterested in discussing the ingredients of their curry, but the food was decent. I waited to order from here until it was a serious lull in traffic so I could ask my annoying vegan questions (Is there egg in this? Do you use fish sauce? Is the curry meat-​based? Why are you staring at me like you want to hit me?) Points for having brown rice (finally) and the kim chi (they give you like ½ an ounce) was a nice touch, but the vegan options are limited. I might try the kim chi on rice some time but it’s definitely priced for the spam and egg that comes on it and most places remove items without making up the difference with extra veggies so I hesitate…

I was really excited to try this new place in the Sorrento Valley Food Court. Their menu items looked delicious and on the counter was displayed a good looking bento box. Just to be clear, this is a Korean style «Japanese» bento box place, so don’t come expecting Japanese bento or anything close. The katsu bento came with the pork katsu, veggies, salad, tempura, korean mandoo (gyoza), miso soup and rice with furikake on top. And it included a soda, which I didn’t want. That’s a lot of food if only it tasted good.
Zucchini tempura was cold cold cold inside, caught me off guard. Gyoza was deep fried and the filling is similar or the same to the frozen gyoza at the Asian markets., ie not very good. This is the lazy and unfortunate way to make gyoza, even if it is a frozen one. The veggies were horribly overcooked and just unpleasant to look at. The salad could have been possibly good, but it’s packed with all the hot food. Nobody likes a hot green salad. Katsu was just ok. Only thing I ate was the rice with furikake and the miso soup, which were decent… but thats rice and miso soup.
I gave this place 2 stars for trying (clean and fast) Maybe it was an off day or time of day so I will give it another try. For the price, I wish the quality and preparation was better. Asian Markets around San Diego have much much better and more authentic bento box offerings, but they are usually premade and cold. Hopefully they can improve and focus on these points. Having more food volume in my book does not offer me better value.
Oh and it didn’t come in a bento box, which was also unfortunate.