Shabu-Shabu Onyasai

When it starts to get chilly here in Okinawa (seriously, it does!), it’s time to find places to eat that matches the climate. Luckily, despite being the scorching tropical island 10 months out of the year, it still has its considerable dining options for that cozy body warming you yearn during the winter. Among them, Shabu-Shabu Onyasai does the job quite nicely. The theme of the restaurant is Japanese but with a modern twist decor. The fusion of old tatami with modern wicket partitions is oddly quite elegant.

For the food, as the name already implies, Shabu-Shabu Onyasai is an all you can eat style buffet dining where you cook your food by boiling them in different flavoured broths. The most popular flavour I believe is their Sukiyaki in where you can drink the soup. Your choices of meat include beef, pork, or chicken (all thinly sliced for easy boiling) and a wide variety of vegetables such as cabbages, beansprouts, carrots, mushrooms, just to name a few. You can also get different types of seasoning for your broth to make your own unique interesting flavour. We had the hot spicy broth and added some Korean spices making it sort of like a Jjgae (Korean hot pot stew). One thing to note, if you’ve never had shabu-shabu before, you will notice that they give you a little strainer ladle to go with your hot pot. For what you ask? When boiling the meats, you can’t help but get some of that meat sediment froth on the surface. If left unattended, the froth will almost cover the entire hot pot. The strainer ladle is used to periodically scoop out the froth. Trust me, this is necessary because, nobody enjoys – a “frothy-brothy”. For your sweet tooth, they have desserts which focus a lot on ice cream which is great I guess because it soothes your tongue after you burnt it from drinking that boiling hot spicy chilli Korean broth!

All and all, it’s perfect especially during the winter season. Price ranges at about 3,000 yen for all you can eat which puts it on the above average on cost but not bad since it’s all you can eat. They have a couple of branches scattered all around island but the easiest for me is the one in Awase. After exiting legion gate of Camp Foster, keep going straight following the road for about 15 mins. Onyasai will be on the left next to Jimmy’s.