Editor's note: Here's an oldie but goodie item on Samurai Bento, one of our perennial favorite food carts in Portland. It was written in the pre-Internet days of 2007, and never found a hold online. Just one suggestion for Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki: You tried the wrong dish. Samurai Bento's yakisoba is great, but their agedashi tofu is even better. -- Michael Russell

If they gave an Oscar for noodles

By GRANT BUTLER

How many Portland food carts can count an Oscar-winning director among their fans?

Only one we know of: Samurai Bento. Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki was recently so taken with the pork yakisoba at this remarkable downtown trailer kitchen that he gave the owners his autograph to display as an endorsement.

A nod from Miyazaki is pure poetry, since a gluttonous meal in a similar open-air restaurant sparks an otherworldly journey in his Oscar-winning "Spirited Away." Samurai Bento is also a journey, filled with outta-this-world flavor and freshness, rooted in owner Munekatsu Daigo's 15 years' experience cooking in Japan.

Everything is made to order, and including tempura with prawns, onions, broccoli and thick slices of pumpkin --all perfectly fried and paired with rice and edamame for $7 (it helps that the cart has a full kitchen with a deep fryer, commercial griddle and six-burner gas range). Also seek out the donburi offerings, including a slightly sweet katsudon of tender pork cutlet served over sticky rice ($6) and the hamburg steak ($6), a Japanese-style ground beef patty doused with a homemade sauce laced with red wine.

And there's that pork yakisoba that Miyazaki liked so much. It's classic festival food in Japan, and it turns up at almost every Portland festival, though none of those noodle bowls can stand up to this. The plump noodles, lightly fried and not the least bit greasy, are loaded with thin slices of pork, bits of onion, broccoli and cabbage, and topped with a fried egg and pink pickled ginger. You won't find anything this beautiful -- or tasty -- from any booth at Waterfront Park.

Open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays (even in the heat); 950 S.W. Alder St.; 503-757-8802.

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