It’s not unusual for people to cook more food than they can finish in one sitting. That’s especially true for single-person households that have to save money by having leftovers they can eat the next day or so. Storage for these leftovers, however, sometimes becomes just a second thought, at least until you stare at your fridge or start preparing your meal using them. Food storage isn’t just about keeping food fresh and edible, though that is definitely a primary concern. Keeping them presentable is also a key factor that could affect your appetite, and this “two-way” container design concept helps store food the way you would eat them on a plate by officially making the dish cap serve as a plate as well.

Designer: Haechan Ryu

It might sound strange at first, but it’s actually not uncommon for people to use a food container’s lid as an ad hoc plate, both for reheating food as well as eating from it. This often happens when you store food in a deep dish, like a bowl, and then have to transfer it to a plate for serving. The back-and-forth moving of food from different containers and plates not only involves more work but also risks losing some of the flavors in the process.

Roll is an attempt to preserve not only the flavors of food but also their presentation. It eschews the traditional square or rectangular shape of food containers in favor of something round. Admittedly, it might not be the most space-efficient shape, especially when you’re stocking a lot of food in the fridge. It is, however, more presentable and visually interesting, and the single-person households these containers are designed for usually don’t store as much food as large families anyway.

What makes Roll different from bowl food containers (which do exist, of course) is that it wholeheartedly embraces the culture of using the lid or dish cap as a plate. That’s why the cap itself was made to look presentable, using soft and clean tones like ivory, sky blue, and terracotta. The idea is that you set the freshly cooked food on the lid itself and then later just cover it with the glass bowl when it’s time to put it away. The next time you want to eat it, you don’t have to rearrange the food again to make it presentable. Simply take off the cover and dig in!

Roll takes the food container concept upside-down, literally, by making it usable, whether as a bowl with a round lid or a plate with a bowl cover. It definitely saves a bit of work and time and helps keep even leftovers looking scrumptious, something that you might have sorely missed if you’ve been living by yourself for a long time.