Blogmas Day 01: First Okinawan Food
First Blogmas post will be a short food porn post!
After 3 grueling flights, 20-something hours later, my sister and I arrived in Naha, Okinawa around 3pm. We cleaned ourselves up at the hotel and headed out straight away for some Okinawan food!
Above is Kokusai Dori, a very touristy street but ho hey, we were tourists after all. A fantastic street for plenty of Okinawan eats and souvenirs. Our hotel was within walking distance of the street and the first restaurant I wanted to hit, Yunangi, was near it. Yunangi is number 1 on Tripadviser and is known as one of the best places for traditional Okinawan cuisine. I'm far to much of foreigner to be a judge of that however the food was very yummy indeed! The restaurant is cute and small, and from what I remember it was entirely run by woman, including all the cooks behind the incredibly small open kitchen.
I'm afraid I don't have any interior or exterior shots of the restaurant! Yes, silly blogger mistake - taking pictures of venues was a habit I couldn't get into it but hopefully next trip I'll be better at this. I do of course have food porn shots though!
Umibudo - Okinawan Sea Grapes - one of the super foods responsible for Okinawa's long life expectancy. It's a sea-salty, refreshing seaweed, wish I had the chance to try this in a rice dish!
Rafute - Braised Pork Belly - if you can only have one dish from this restaurant then pick this one!
Gurukun Karaage - Okinawan Fried Fish - don't let the picture fool you, its a petite little fish. Nothing too special about this dish, its just a deep fried fish.
Goya Champuru - Stir Fry with Bitter Melon, bits of pork, egg and tofu. The Goya, Bitter Melon, is another super food rich in all the good stuff. We ate a plate of this stuff everyday! We can get bitter melon here locally but it's slightly different and I only ever remember it being very bitter and unpleasant. The Okinawan bitter melon is slightly bitter too but the stir fry combos work very well.
Mozuku Tempura - another new favourite of ours. This black seaweed was served pickled with many other dishes on our trip here in Okinawa but this tempura version is super yummy, I never thought to buy any mozuku souvenirs, hopefully I can source it online somewhere.
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