Shimabutaya Onna — Restaurant in Onna

Agu pork is probably the best pork I’ve tasted to date. Here you get to eat it in its purest form, steamed thinly sliced with no seasoning. We generally enjoy steamed food, finding that it enhances the sweetness of most foods, especially meats.

We ordered the Shimakuru pork course - at just 500 JPY more than the Yanbaru course, this felt like a no-brainer and was highly recommended by the restaurant. The pork has to be cooked just right - more than 3 minutes and the pork gets a bit tough. The flavor was rich and aromatic, enhanced nicely by their house ponzu. The restaurant recommends that you steam it on top of vegetables, and the steaming pork imparts a light coating of fat to the vegetables, making it savory and sweet.

The pork course was light and easy to eat. Since we felt that we had room for more, we ordered a serving of Mozuku seaweed tempura and a scallion tempura that the staff said was only found in Okinawa. The Mozuku seaweed was mixed with glutinous rice before deep frying, and tasted somewhat like a Chinese teochew fried rice cake, umami and nutty but light. The scallion tempura was sweet but a tad chewy.

We ended the dinner with a nice tofu pudding with a dash of Okinawa brown sugar syrup. This was the first time we had tasted Okinawa brown sugar, and found that the syrup tasted complex, with plum overtones and a slight sourness to cut the sweetness.

The restaurant was decorated in a rustic farmhouse traditional style, which went well with the bamboo steam baskets. They also had a nice selection of Awamori, a more complex version of sake that we ordered in the rocks.

Overall a...

Restaurant is great for those that love pork. I particularly enjoyed the pork sushi, and set meal. The jimami tofu was also very interesting and viscous.

We went on a Friday night and it was one of the few places that did not require us to book reservation in advance. Not sure if we got lucky or if this is their normal policy.

Food cost person was around 3000 yen per person but I think we over ordered as the portions were generous.

Overall, it was a lovely experience and I would come back but...

We saw the restaurant in internet and tried it. Reservation for the same evening was without any problems, even if we do not speak japanese, the staff was very friendly and patient with us. They helped us ordering with an ipad and menu card in english and explained all to us. The pork was excellent in taste and well flavoured. All the staff was so friendly to us. So in combination with quality of food and the friendliness of all the staff we booked a table for the next evening at once. Our...