Okinawan Cuisine at Nirai Kanai, Liang Court

Okinawa is Japan's southern-most province spanning hundreds of islands. What's interesting is that because Okinawa descends from the Ryukyu Kingdom, it's got a different history, different culture and even a slightly different language/dialect/accent than the rest of Japan. If you're interested, you can visit the Wikipedia page on the Ryukyu Kingdoms. For our purposes, though, we're primarily interested in the differences in the food!


We head down to the basement of Liang Court to try out the nosh served at Nirai Kanai Okinawan Restaurant. Glancing at the menu, it feels remarkably like a Chinese-style "rice and dishes" menu where you order a few dishes to share among the table. Japanese stalwarts like Ramen and Stewed Pork are available, as are Okinawa specialities like thin pancakes and deep fried pork knuckle.

Although the restaurant serves free-flow hitomebore shortgrain rice, we decide to go easy on the carbs and instead go for Jyuushi Onigiri (Okinawan Seasoned Rice Ball, $6 for a pair). It's cooked in mushroom broth with liberal amounts of kale, pork, carrots and mushrooms. Pretty delicious and is actually flavored well enough to stand on its' own!


A bowl of Aasa Jiru (Aosa Seaweed Soup with Tofu, $10) is up next! You get about 4 small bowls of dashi-based, seaweed soup from this big bowl. The Aosa seaweed was nice - wasn't too soggy nor too firm to be slurped up in the soup. Naturally it's a clear, light-tasting broth so if you're looking for strong, creamy angmoh style soups, better try something else.


Typically stewed/simmered pork like what's in our next dish is called Buta Kakuni; here it's called Rafutee. It's $13.80 for four large slices of simmered flavored pork belly in a wonderfully umami gravy. It's delicious, the belly isn't too fatty and the dish is served with some veg on the side - what's not to love? Well, if we had to nitpick perhaps some parts of the meat were a tad bit dry, but we wouldn't hesitate in recommending this dish regardless.


Sooki also comes in two sizes - $10 and $6. The $6 portion pictured here comes as two portions of grilled pork rib with soft bones, served with lemon and salt on the side. You know, that cut of rib that comes with the chewable, edible bones. Here it's grilled until the soft bones are ... melting (for lack of a better word). It's a little alien chewing on warm melted cartilage and perhaps wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.


At about $20-$40 per person, food's hearty and delicious and is decently priced, too. We'd definitely recommend coming here for the Japanese and yet not quite Japanese experience. Don't worry about reservations as there's typically little or no queue even on peak times. Open for Lunch and Dinner everyday. Non-halal.

Singapore's Best Cheap Sushi? Ryoshi Sushi Ikeikemaru, Liang Court.

Today, our quest to find the ordinary (wo)man's Holy Grail of Sushi - that perfect balance between cost and quality - brings us to Ryoshi Sushi Ikeikemaru in the basement of Liang Court. Much has been said of how this sushi restaurant serves quality sushi at reasonable prices, so we pay a visit to see if it can unseat our current favorite Tomi Sushi.


There isn't much of a queue on a Sunday night, so we're seated pretty quickly. Ikeikemaru is a kaitenzushi restaurant, but interestingly they've also added an iPad ordering system. Glancing at the sparsely populated belt it's perhaps safe to assume that the chefs have decided to make most of their sushi to order instead of filling up the conveyor.


One advantage of this, of course, is that you get freshly made sushi that hasn't been sitting on the conveyor belt for ages. We had some salmon, aburi salmon, aji (jack mackerel), tuna, shima aji (white trevally), kinmedai (splendid alfonsino) and madai (red sea bream). We thought that the fish was mostly generously portioned and fresh, and we liked the relatively small size of the hand-formed rice ball.


On the down side, our orders arrived in a plate-by-plate trickle. It's not exactly fun for a hungry person to need to wait 5-10 minutes in between bites. Also, while the rice was nicely vinegar'ed, we thought that it wasn't quite packed enough and fell apart too easily especially when handled with chopsticks.


Prices are reasonable, but not quite cheap. Granted, you could stuff yourself silly on SGD1.80 inari (beancurd skin) sushi, but if you order off the "today's recommended fish" menu, expect to pay SGD5.80 or SGD6.80 per plate.


We ended up with a SGD62.85 bill for two people, which is okay, but you'd pay roughly the same price at Tomi Sushi and get a lot more food thrown in.


So overall we can't quite wholeheartedly recommend Ryoshi Sushi Ikeikemaru. While the sushi is above average, we don't like the long wait times and prices are a little on the high side for a conveyor belt sushi place. Still, if you're in the area and feel like eating some nice sushi at prices that won't break the bank, you probably won't be disappointed. Non halal.