Eating in Okinawa ~ Part 2 [日本料理]

Another dish I ate, or rather was forced to eat, was Okinawa soba.  Soba is not my favourite food, having ordered a teishoku of katsudon plus soba.  Both came full-sized and by the end of the meal, I decided that I wasn’t going to eat soba again if I could help it.  I had assumed that Okinawa was like the rest of Japan, where there would be restaurants around major sightseeing areas.  Okinawa Peace Memorial Park evidently isn’t one that is swamped by tourists.  There were a few shops selling soft ice-cream but no shokudos.  I could either eat soft ice-cream for lunch, or tolerate a rumbling tummy for an hour’s bus ride to Okinawa Cultural World, where there would definitely be lunch.  Luckily at the end of the row of ice-cream sellers was a shop with a sign Okinawa soba on the window.  It’s almost like a sign: it’s time to return to eating soba once again.  I was rather concerned with the freshness of the ingredients of the shop, seeing that there was only one other customer finishing his soba.  Nevertheless, I ordered a soba and waited for an unexpectedly long time for the soba to arrive.  While waiting, I entertained thoughts that because the shop probably served like two customers a day or maybe less, the shopkeeper-cum-cook was busy getting the rock-hard pork to defrost, which was why my soba was taking soooo long to arrive.  And when it did, I was initially surprised by the rather generous serving of the pickled dakon that came with the soba.  Usually, the pickles serving is rather small, and I wondered if the shop found a chance to get rid of its pickled dakon through me.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

Surprise #1: Okinawa soba is wheat soba, not buckwheat soba.  The soba is much thicker and chewier and tastier than buckwheat soba.  And I decided that I could eat soba, that is Okinawa soba, again.

Surprise #2: The shopkeeper-cum-cook obviously marinated his own pork, and he obviously had good skills.  The pork had visible layers of skin and fat and meat.  Ordinarily, I would have removed the layer of fat and skin.  But this pork literally melted in my mouth with slight pressure from my tongue.  And the lingering fragrance of the pork in my mouth made the one-hour ride to Okinawa Cultural World after lunch very pleasant.

Surprise #3: No, the shopkeeper-cum-cook wasn’t trying to get rid of his pickled dakon.  He knew that his dakon was good, he probably also knew that people might ask for a second serving if their skins were thick enough, so he kept his customers faces intact and their tummies and tongues happy by giving a larger-than-normal serving of dakon.  His dakons were a pretty shade of pink, and crunchy, and just the right tartness.  Paired with self-made ginger as well, the Okinawa soba is a real gem hidden away in a little non-descript ice-cream shop at the Okinawa Peace Memorial Park.