With indoor dining recently halted because of rising COVID-19 numbers, restaurateurs are getting increasingly crafty in their attempts to make money and feed the public. Exhibit A: Billy Ngo, owner of Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine, the upscale sushi house in East Sacramento. This week, Ngo started offering grab-and-go bento boxes, available noon–2 p.m. Monday–Friday. Priced at $13–$18, the boxes offer a changing assortment of cooked items, sushi and vegetarian options. They’re available for pickup just inside the restaurant entrance on a first-come, first-served basis. Once the prepackaged bento boxes sell out, that’s it.
Kru also recently got into the meal kit game with packaged dumpling-and-broth meal kits that can be warmed up at home or frozen for future use. They come in two varieties: duck dumplings with mushroom dashi and kabocha squash agnolotti with squash dashi.
Ngo was never big on takeout—until the pandemic hit, that is. “Dine-in guests always came first,” he explains. “We only took takeout orders if we had time. But the pandemic changed everything.” Now, Kru has a full menu of dinnertime takeout options. So if you need your nigiri fix, you know where to go.
3135 Folsom Blvd., (916) 551-1559; www.krurestaurant.com
