What do you do when you get a box full of culinary goodies straight from Japan? You host a sake dinner and invite the public to attend.Cafe Ten has organised a Bento Box and Sake Evening tomorrow at 7pm.Chef Mikey Knight will put his culinary skills to the test, utilising a handful of Asian flavourings and food items — some of which may be unfamiliar to many.Mr Knight and restaurant manager Mika Coddington came up with the idea for the Japanese-themed event months ago.He said: “Some of Mika’s family live in Japan, so when we decided we were going to do a sake night, rather than ordering them from some place else, she asked them to send us a box of goodies.“Because [of the Japanese characters on the package] I can’t tell you exactly what some of the items are until I taste them, but there are different types of dried fruits and spiced crackers, benito flakes which are dried fish and [a clear fish broth known as] dashi. It’s just like a box of heaven.”Since the items from Japan arrived, Mr Knight has been experimenting in the kitchen; one of his creations was a salad with avocado, cucumber, lobster and apple marshmallows.He said the bento boxes will be filled with “a bunch of surprises”. Instead of one big entrée, guests will be treated to six appetiser size portions.“They are all going to act in harmony. You might get something sweet or spicy and then something that is going to cool your palate off. They are all like appetisers, but with the amount you are going to eat it’s going to turn into a full meal.”Different bottles of flavoured sake will also be on offer and paired with the various bento box dishes. Sake, often grouped with rice wine but made similar to brewed beer, has between two and three times the alcohol content of the average ale.Due to the “intense flavour” of the drink, plum wine will also be on offer for some of the bento box dishes, explained Ms Coddington.She said if she had the time and resources the restaurant would be transformed into a “Japanese den” for the night, but instead they will have an eclectic mix of Japanese music playing. She worked with her husband, who happens to be a DJ, on the playlist, which includes both traditional Japanese music and pop hits from Japanese artists.She was confident Mr Knight would find some way to make the food interesting, especially considering his specialities naturally have an Asian-inspired flavour to them.“We have started doing a lot more nights where people don’t come and get menus. Chef Mikey will just come out and talk to them and then starts creating,” she explained.“You can tell Asian-inspired food is his passion because everything he makes, without even thinking about it, is like that. It’s going to be very interesting to see how he makes traditional food modern.”Japanese food can be salty as they cure some of their meats; whereas items like udon noodles and tofu don’t have any salt at all, Mr Knight explained.“Their salt is soy sauce and their pepper is wasabi,” he said.Mr Knight said the menu might include dishes like sweet shrimp cakes, some kind of oyster dish and sesame-salted tuna sashimi with cilantro and citrus dressing called yuzu.He encouraged people to come out, insisting there was more to Japanese food than what’s typically found in this part of the world miso soup and sushi.“It’s going to be fun and you are going to eat things you have never eaten before. It’s also going to be great to show people another level of Japanese food, not just sushi.“There might be that sashimi course, but you are not going to come and find a California roll or be eating vegetable tempura. You are not going to find the stuff you get at a sushi restaurant and this is going to show people a lot of variation in Japanese cooking.“I have researched a lot online and then after I did that I experimented a lot. You use the same flavours, but then you experiment with it and do it to your liking.”Dinner is $75 per person. To reserve seats, e-mail ten@yellowfin.bm or call 295-0857.