CONTRIBUTED BY QUENTIN RICHARDSON

Booten l Okinawa Hai!

After enjoying an awesome movie at Q cinema inside Naha Main Place, my date and I wanted to eat a light dinner before heading home. Since it was a nice night out and we didn’t want to lose an awesome free parking spot, we walked across the street to Booten restaurant.

I was in awe at the decor and creative seating arrangements. Once seated, we took our time choosing what we wanted to eat. We ordered a set of yakitori as appetizers while we scanned the menu for exciting dishes.

Booten l Okinawa Hai!

We quickly realized that this menu had more to offer than just traditional Japanese food, and we ordered different styles of food (Vietnamese, French etc.)

Booten l Okinawa Hai!

The presentation of the food was very stylish and tasty! 

Booten l Okinawa Hai!

Our meals arrived fast because the staff uses iPod Touches to send orders to the kitchen. We shared food and enjoyed the creative fusion of cultures in each bite.

Booten l Okinawa Hai!

Booten l Okinawa Hai!The atmosphere is very quiet and and friendly, especially for foreign guests (they are curious about us). All of the staff members enjoyed quick chats with us and offered smiles. Overall, the entire experience was enjoyable and I would highly recommend it to anyone. I strongly suggest also bringing a local friend to fully enjoy the extent of the entire menu.

Payment: Yen and most major credit cards

Directions: To get to this place, it best to drive southbound on either Highway 58 or 330 into Naha and follow the signage leading you to DFS Galleria. From Highway 58, turn left at Uenoya intersection (third light after the bridge). Drive until you see Naha Main Place mall and use the parking garage inside. Walk out of Naha main place using the southeast exit and Booten is across the street. From Highway 330, drive south into Naha and turn right  at the light under Omoromachi monorail station (second station once you enter Naha). At the first light, turn right and park inside Naha Main Place and walk across the street. There is a lot of traffic in this area so be careful!

5 COMMENTS

  1. Editor’s Note: Due to technical difficulties this comment was not saved on our server. We are re-publishing it now to continue the conversation on this post.

    From Tawna on 9/12/13:
    “My husband and I had our first date night here several months ago! We liked the place though it was frustrating trying to understand the menu. Please don’t mistake me – I’m not suggesting they have one in English. We’re in Japan. I expect it to be in Japanese. But we were new to the island and it was just really hard for us to decipher what we were getting. ALL of that to say… we had a bowl of soba, some tempura and each of us got a steak that was TO. DIE. FOR. Oh it was cooked PERFECTLY. The soba was a little weird as it tasted like hot dogs. Haha! Anyway – it was a cool place! We shared the first two items and then got our own steaks. Each of us got a soda. We paid around $50. So it’s a little pricey too, IMO.”

  2. My fiancee and I stumbled across this restaurant last night, and needless to say were quite impressed.

    Brian: It is definitely NOT a non-smoking establishment.
    However, where we were seated (upstairs at the sushi bar), the ventilation must be stellar or something, because we didn’t notice that the couples on either side of us were smoking until halfway through our meal and then only because we saw them light up, not because we could smell it.
    Also, the menu is NOT in english (aside from an ESL blurb or two and a few title headings like ‘Beer’, or ‘Wine’).
    Luckily, there were a few pictures in each section to give us a bit of an idea what we might expect.
    Lastly, the majority of servers we encountered all spoke a tiny bit of english (enough to communicate what we wanted along with much pointing).

    Nick: We didn’t see any children, but it was quite late when we went and the place was packed with a wide range of adults, so I doubt if they actually have a no-kids policy.

    Niska: Unfortunately we aren’t able to translate directly the names of the dishes, but I’ll try my best at rating what we had.
    One blurb on the menu that was in english did indicate that their soba is a signature dish, so we tried the pictured one with egg and pork for ~1000Yen and were very happy (second best hot soba we’ve had in Japan, the first being the Abura-soba @ Nekomata in Kyoto). 4.5/5
    We also had a cold soba plate (top of the list of sobas on the menu), and it was so-so. 3/5
    We ordered one each of the top 4 yakitoris (Based on taste/texture, I believe they were: chicken kidney, chicken heart, chicken liver, and some sort of intestines), and the server asked if we wanted them with ‘salt’ or ‘sauce’, so we chose ‘sauce’.
    Internal organs aren’t my favourite, but I did enjoy each of them, and compared to other skewers of organs I’ve been eating throughout South East Asia, these were definitely very good. 4.5/5
    Lastly we ordered the 9 piece sushi plate (egg [what a waste:p], tuna, salmon, scallop, octopus, cuttlefish, and 3 white fishes I can’t specify), and were lucky to be sitting so we could watch the sushi-chef prepare it for us.
    The fish was high quality, and his skills seemed above average, but not the best sushi we’ve had, so I’ll give it 4/5.
    We drank a couple Orion Draught (top entry under the ‘Beer’ heading), and I tried the first-listed Awamori over ice, both good refreshments. 4/5