While I love my space here at crazy white girl, I kind of felt like I was missing my audience on Okinawa centric blog posts. They get lost in the volume of posts from Edmonton, and I am certain that most of my readers from Canada do not give a damn about restaurants thousands of miles away.

So, since September last year (!) I have been trying to start a dedicated blog about food and restaurants in Okinawa as well as any other areas I may visit while I am here. It is hard going for English information on restaurants here – many of the blog posts by English speakers tend to be about restaurants close to the bases, and frankly, do not look that appetizing.

I enjoyed rebuilding a blog, especially one with a specific purpose. It took a long time, though, with many breaks as I contemplated my fate in this country.

Each post offers English information about the restaurant, as well as a map. I am hoping it will soon become a resource people can rely on. There are easy to browse sections by location, cuisine type and information about Japanese ingredients as well as shopping for food products and cooking in Okinawa. When comparing it to crazy white girl, there are bigger pictures, better tagging and more features about food in general here in Japan.

There are still a few glitches and changes I am making, so excuse any bits and bobs left lying around there as I move into my final preparations to really promote the hell out of this thing.

I will still be posting here about home cooking experiments, more general Japanese food tidbits and my travels, but most of my blog posts about Okinawan restaurants will now be posted on Eating Okinawa. If you are a regular reader, you will notice a lot of duplicate content up there so far, but from this point on it will be all new. So please be sure to visit EatingOkinawa.com for all your Okinawan food needs.

Think of it as a first year in Japan anniversary present to … ME!

When I was about 7 years old, my parents started a birthday tradition of bringing me to the Japanese Village in downtown Edmonton for a little teppanyaki fun. The last year I went – the year I turned 10 – the staff took a Polaroid of me wearing a huge Japanese wig hairstyle thing…and that was the end of that tradition. Partly because we moved to the UK and partly because even at age 10, the idea of wearing a wig thousands of other of people had worn and “wearing” an experience thousands of others of people had turned me off. Yes, I was a snob even an an early age it would seem.

Twenty years on I think I have returned to my roots. While themed restaurants are not my first stop, I am less likely to turn my nose up at them. Perhaps out of nostalgia or out of expat desperation. While looking for a fun experience for my mom’s last night on Okinawa back in January, a friend suggested taking her to one of the restaurants in the Sam`s Group.

These restaurants (owned by three American brothers) tend to be teppanyaki restaurants. As the idea of a chef  “performing” just for us cooking frozen seafood likely imported from another country made me cringe more and more, I decided to take one for the team and see what it was like.

Seafood display at the front of the rather large restaurant

I might be able to sit at that bar for hours if it had the right view

I was pleasantly surprised. The Sam’s Group has been on Okinawa since 1970, and they know what their patrons want. They mostly appeal to young American military families going out for special occasions or entertaining and to tourists from mainland Japan looking for an American experience in Japan. It is a really weird contrast in diners.

The location we went to, Sam’s by the Sea Awase, was one of the original restaurants. It is loaded with tiki torches, moais, outriggers, rattan furniture, shells, and all sorts of fun Hawaiian bric-a-brac. It could be tacky and gaudy and messy, but somehow it isn’t.

I think the there were three factors in a great experience at Sam`s.

1. my expectations were low. I was not expecting much from an Americanized Japanese restaurant idealizing America in Japan. (wrap your head around that one)
2. we chose to visit the one restaurant in the group that served entrees as opposed to teppanyaki style
3. we had a coupon and dammit, we were going to use it

Nerdy fun with GIFs and my shark mugs.

The drinks were really good, and we walked away with four free themed cups which brought me more joy than you can imagine. One man’s junk is another woman’s treasure, I guess. My mom got a margarita and Mike got a pina colada. As I was driving, I stuck to the virgin drinks.

I’m not kidding when I said besides my mom visiting and some tacos I made on New Years Day, these cups were the best part of my January.

We started with escargot and cheese tempura. The escargot were fresh, garlicky and buttery. They could have come with a bit more toast for sopping up the butter in my opinion, but they were still delicious. The cheese tempura were basically glorified cheese sticks. But when you have not had cheese in some time, you take what you get.

Then a small salad that was alright, served with our choice from four different dressings. Following that, a bowl of housemade piping hot Indian curry soup. People rave about this on Okinawa web forums, trying to figure out the recipe for when they go home. I thought it was alright – better and more unusual than most standard complimentary restaurant soups.

Finally, our entrees.

Going all out I got the theatrical sounding “flaming sword shish kababs.” Out came the chef with a sword laced in … fuel, and placed my rare steak chunks and veggies on my plate. It was a nice experience, but I wish I had just gotten regular steak after tasting my mom and Mike’s beef. My meat had a sweet marinade on it which was good, but I really love the taste of just straight up beef.

I’d place the steak on a level above the Keg but below Carnevino in Vegas, which was the last truly awesome steak I had in North America. It is probably unfair to even make that comparison, actually. But, this is better than average steak for a restaurant, and the presentation and fun atmosphere make it a great destination restaurant.

With a last minute change of order, I switched my side of bread to garlic rice, at an extra cost. I am glad I did, and recommend it to others, even if you are “riced out” – a situation that does not happen to me often here as the Japanese rice is so good. Sam’s rice was tender and flavourful. The bread was decent at Sam’s, but the butter was tropical fruit infused and was a bit sweet and fruity. At first we thought it was the bread itself, but that was not the case.

Chevron-shaped impressively high coconut cream pie…sadly not as good as I had hoped.

We closed out with a piece of mile high coconut cream pie. I had been eyeing it across the dining room, but it was probably the weakest element of the meal. The meringue was a bit sticky and soggy, not fluffy and light. I would probably forgo dessert next time and just get another tropical drink.

Sam’s has been around on Okinawa for over 40 years, churning out steak, seafood and classic cocktails to soldiers and tourists alike. They are good at what they do, and I know we will return there again sometime in the future.

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Sam’s by the Sea, Awase
(other locations in the chain, visit Sam’s Group for more info)

ps: while my photography on the blog is normally standard at best, thank you for sticking through this substandard stuff. Not my best. It was part of the reason I delayed this entry so long, actually!

Ballpark Hot Dogs, Chatan

This, right away, sets it apart from anything else on Okinawa. Add to this more “foreign” restaurants; Indian food, Mexican food and Thai food are scattered amongst the more traditional Japanese offerings, add a sprinkling of some “American size” clothing shops, a Starbucks outlet and a huge ferris wheel and there you have American Village. I thought it would be so horribly kitschy and touristy I could not stand it, but I guess I have been away from home long enough that I enjoy it. Your standards change when you move overseas.

Standards change when it comes to food as well. A friend recently asked me how I was coping with the different food. He meant cooking at our place, as he knows I think Japanese food is stellar, but sometimes you just need a taste of home.

You can get pretty much everything here if you look hard enough and pay enough money. Or, if you are willing to experiment, you can substitute. So the cheese is not as good as it is back home, but that’s okay, your tongue has a way of forgetting.

That brings me to hot dogs. I have not had a good hot dog in some time. I did not make it a point to even stop in at Costco or Fat Franks before I jumped ship in Edmonton, let alone make my own, so it has been a while. However, while we were in American Village a few weeks ago, we saw a new restaurant had opened; Ballpark Hot Dogs. It opened early in February 2011.

I was skeptical. I have had good burgers here, but not every burger is automatically good. Would a hot dog be any good?

Turns out it wasn’t good…

IT WAS AWESOME.

Perhaps this is a result of my tongue forgetting, but I really do think these hot dogs were quality.

Mike got the dog with chili, melted nacho cheese and sauteed onions. I got “The Nationals” or the dog with onions, chili and cheddar cheese. The buns were soft, the dogs juicy and plump and the toppings pretty fresh. They really pushed up my sodium intake, but they WERE delicious.

At the suggestion of the clerk, we also got some ranch bacon fries. The fries were a little underdone which made things a bit soggy but the bacon and ranch were a great combination.

Ballpark Hot Dogs is basically a take out hole in the wall, but there is ample indoor and outdoor seating on the top deck of Mihama Carnival Park, where the restaurant is.

The hot dogs are named after baseball teams and feature different toppings like nacho cheese, sauerkraut, salsa, onions (raw and sauteed) and various sauces.

Hot dogs run 390-450 yen which is a decent deal, since the hot dogs are made to order with fresh toppings. They also have sets with fries and drinks. The menu is bilingual and the guy who helped us had extremely good English.

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Ballpark Hot Dogs
2nd Floor, Mihama Carnival Park (by Freshness Burger, by the ferris wheel)
American Village Chatan
open 11am-11pm everyday
Map