By Neal Wong

Chikako Kuramoto’s mother packed her a bento box every morning, kindergarten through high school, on a street of small family-run shops in Mitaka, a suburb of Tokyo, where everyone knew each other.

Now, more than three decades later, Kuramoto makes them herself on Judah Street near Ninth Avenue. CSK Kitchen, the Japanese grab-and-go shop that she opened in June, sells onigiri (a rice-based snack with a variety of fillings), sandwiches, bento and sushi, all made fresh throughout the day by Kuramoto and her employees.

The store’s name comes from the family: C for Chika (short for Chikako) and her son Cody, S for her daughter, Sarah and K for Kuramoto. The recipes also come from her family.

“Nowadays you can learn on YouTube, but I’m sure your mom or your grandma has a special way to cook your traditional dish,” Kuramoto said. “That’s what I’m doing. Maybe it’s not in a textbook.”

Kuramoto said she decided on a grab-and-go concept to offer convenience and affordability.

“We’re so lucky in San Francisco that we have so many good restaurants. But in this economy – it’s just so hard to go out right now,” Kuramoto said. “I think it’s good to have this type of store, so you don’t need to worry about the tips or how you dress up. Just come in.”

Some of what the store sells is common in East Asia and difficult to find here. An oven roasts whole sweet potatoes, a staple of convenience stores in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The onigiri/samgak gimbap comes in wrappers with the seaweed sealed in its own sleeve, so it stays off the rice until a customer pulls a tab to open it.

“Every time you open the wrapper, that’s going to be the first time the seaweed touches the rice, so it’s going to be crispy,” Kuramoto said.

Before opening CSK Kitchen, Kuramoto acquired Sakura, the Japanese convenience store on Irving Street.

For the past 11 months, she has been supplying the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park with bento boxes and sandwiches.

Takumi Matsuba, general manager of the garden’s gift shop and tea house, said it sold similar food years ago but dropped it because it required additional staff. He has run the concession for 10 years and before that owned Bushi-tei, a Michelin-starred French-Japanese fusion restaurant in Japantown.

He heard about Kuramoto through a mutual friend and stopped by Sakura to try her food. When he saw the items on the shelf, it reminded him of food in depachika, a Japanese department store food hall.

“The quality of the packaging, and the quality of the sandwich – the way they cut the edges,” Matsuba said. “I had to buy it and taste it, right? Yes, it was acceptable.”

Kuramoto buys her ingredients from wholesalers and local farms. She said she refuses to sell things with subpar ingredients.

“I don’t want the customer to pay for it,” Kuramoto said.

Matsuba said those standards are why he trusts what arrives.

“Sometimes when you receive strawberries, they’re not large enough or kind of mushy,” Matsuba said. “She won’t even deliver. I can trust her quality.”

The tea house receives 50 items daily, consisting of bento boxes and sandwiches. There might be more of some items than others from day to day.

Kuramoto says the food in the tea house is identical to what she now sells at CSK Kitchen.

Oriol Zales, an executive analyst at the University of California, San Francisco, visits the store about once a week. The variety and prices are whatkept her coming back. So far, Zales has tried the onigiri, musubi and a packaged dessert cake.

“I think it’s delicious,” Zales said. “I’ve only tried a couple things, but I’m curious about more.”

Kuramoto wants her store to be a fixture in the neighborhood.

“My kids grew up in San Francisco, and all the people around us helped me raise them,” Kuramoto said. “Now this is my time to give back to the community with good food, healthy food. I want it to be a really reasonable price for everybody.”

CSK Kitchen is open on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.; on Saturdays, from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.; on Sundays, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. Closed on Tuesdays. Catering information is available at cskkitchen.com.