Gorgeous bento lunches for cherry blossom season
With graphic designer and home cook extraordinaire Leanne Gan
Today’s newsletter is a total treat. The best free dopamine you can get in NYC is during cherry blossom season, those fleeting few weeks in April and early May when these pink-bough’d beauties bloom on seemingly every city block. And the very best place to view the city’s cherry blossoms in all their splendor is at Cherry Esplanade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a broad, open lawn flanked by flowering cherry trees.
Since this coming weekend is likely one of the last weeks you can experience peak cherry blossom before it’s gone, today I’m sharing some beautiful picnic lunch inspo courtesy of my good friend Leanne Gan, a talented graphic designer and avid home cook who brings her keen design eye to her beautiful food. (Fun fact: Leanne also designed the logo for this newsletter!) Leanne loves to make the most gorgeous and creative composed bento box lunches for her friends, each one like an exquisite edible present filled with small bites specially tailored to its recipient.
For cherry blossom season last year, we met up one afternoon to exchange bento lunches and enjoy the blooms, and it was so much fun we decided to do it again this year (it’s worth noting that while you can sit on the lawn at Cherry Esplanade, you sadly can’t picnic there, so I would suggest eating outside the gardens before enjoying a stroll). Leanne was kind enough to share some tips on how to design your own beautiful bento box to inspire you to get out this weekend and share a lunch with someone you love.
