Fast food meals built by each customer
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF
The Seoul Bowl with elderberry kombucha at Whole Heart Provisions.
Fast-food restaurants in which you build your own plates are growing like crazy. The enormous appeal is that you get to decide what you’re eating; if you don’t like something, you don’t have to get it. You choose from various categories — grain, protein, vegetables, dressing — and the food comes quite quickly. The beauty (and deliciousness) lies in the fact that the kitchens have prepared some slow-cooked and labor intensive dishes before you got there.
Three more additions to the list include Mei Mei by Design at The Innovation and Design Building; another location of Bon Me, from the popular Asian food truck of the same name; and Whole Heart Provisions, a newcomer owned by Rebecca Arnold, who worked at Sarma and Alden & Harlow, and James DiSabatino of Roxy’s Grilled Cheese, which is the neighboring restaurant.
ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
Noodle salad with tofu and spicy peanut dressing at Bon Me.
Bon Me has brick-and-mortar locations in Kendall Square and Fort Point, a stand at the Boston Public Market, a place barely a week old in Chestnut Hill, and one opened early this year on Alewife Brook Parkway, in the old Cheddar’s location near Trader Joe’s. Once customers stop staring at the wall to choose a “main” and “pick a protein,” the rest happens efficiently. It’s up to you to spice up your bowl. Brown rice with roasted soy and paprika tofu and spicy peanut sauce ($8) has a warm heat to the dressing, but you’ll find yourself reaching for the big bottles of sriracha near the napkins and chopsticks, as you will with most of the proteins. The star is the banh mi sandwich ($6.50), though no one here uses that name, with pork pate that’s not terribly rich, spicy mayo, lots of cucumber and pickled carrot-daikon crunch, and a fine toasted baguette.
In its turquoise shipping container, Mei Mei by Design is a like a permanently parked food truck in a fascinating village of container places on a platform of the massive building. You can order a bowl the place is featuring or design your own. There are benches along the platform to sit on, or head into the canteen steps away for a table. Pureed carrot soup ($3.50) is plain but warming. The Piggery ($11), a bowl of bacon, corn, pickled mushrooms, garlic panko, and tomato dressing, has no panko we can see and hardly any mushrooms. The Hei Wa ($9) with tofu, kimchi, brown rice, baby kale, crispy shallots, and peanut dressing needs both more tofu and more shallots. The kale is way beyond its pull date, yellow and unappetizing. Best of the lot is The Narragansett ($10) with chorizo crumbles, potatoes, tiny cubes of queso fresco, yellow-eyed beans, and an apple dressing. Somehow, even with the array in the take-out cartons, the result is skimpy in the belly.
ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
The Piggery from Mei Mei by Design.
The definition of the word “umami” should read: “Go to Whole Heart Provisions and order anything.” This is exciting food, even in its take-out containers. There are lovely touches. The brown rice is mixed with quinoa, lentils are crispy (wow!), cucumbers smashed, green beans blistered, tomatoes cured, Brussels sprouts shaved raw. You can make your own dish, but first try Seoul-style ($8.50) with carrot and radish kimchi, edamame, those unbelievably wonderful lentils, and more. Mission-style ($8.50) includes Japanese eggplant, delectable cukes, shiitake. Everything here is vegetarian with flavors that will knock you out. Seared avocado ($4.50) is smothered with tahini, crispy lentils, and za’atar. Sesame shishitos ($4.50), mildly hot chiles, are tossed in sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds. They will become your new popcorn.
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF
Seared avocado and sesame shishitos at Whole Heart Provisions
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