Monday, July 14, 2008

Cafe Masoho

Location: Onna village, on the 58 just north of the Onna town office, on the west side of the street. They share a parking lot with a restaurant that has a pink pig face on it.
Hours: open at noon, unsure what time or what day closed. No English menu and limited English-speaking staff

This adorable cafe has wood flooring and ceiling supports, comfortable sofas, lots of plants, and paintings of the sea. They play nice jazzy techno sort of background music. They do lunch sets most days, but on Sunday you order a la carte. As there is no English menu, we did the point and shoot technique. We ended up with two delightful lunches. Each came with a spinach cream soup, light and tasty, though could have had more salt. The lunches (800-900Y) came on Okinawan ceramic platters, a circle-within-circle style. The inner circle held the sandwich, the outer had green curly leaf salad with balsamic vinaigrette, a spoonful of mashed potato, and a bit of burdock sesame salad. One sandwich was fresh pita bread stuffed with a chunks of fried tofu, tomato, and sweet vinegary carrot in an amazing miso dressing. This sounds bizarre, but was really really good. The other sandwich was sliced crusty bread with a fish-bean-parsley pate. Another wonderful array of flavours many would not themselves think of putting together. We got an iced coffee, which was fine, and came with that thick Japanese creamer and simple syrup. We were tempted to get one of their sweets, based on the merit of the main meals, but were able to behave. Next time.