Teppanyaki Dinner at Kise, The Ritz-Carlton, Okinawa

It's Yoko, the hotel-living gourmet hunter, @foodie_yoko! I live in hotels and eat out 365 days a year.

This time I stayed at The Ritz-Carlton, Okinawa!

There are no restaurants around the hotel, so I decided to have dinner at the teppanyaki restaurant inside the Ritz, "Kise."

For the room at The Ritz-Carlton, Okinawa, see here:

Kise at The Ritz-Carlton, Okinawa

You walk through the courtyard and into the restaurant.

Inside Kise the lighting is a little subdued, and it has a lovely mood!
Counter seats are arranged in a U shape around the teppan griddle.

The non-alcoholic drink selection is extensive, even including non-alcoholic wine and non-alcoholic cocktails!

We were shown to a seat with a slight view of the courtyard.

It turns out a chef is assigned exclusively to us to cook for us.

For drinks we had a non-alcoholic cocktail and sparkling water!

Keion Course

The condiments for the teppanyaki are pink rock salt from Ishigaki Island, onion mixed with ume (pickled plum) kombu, and grated-daikon ponzu. The ume kombu is interesting! You can feel the care in the choice of salt, too.

Before starting to cook, the chef showed us the ingredients for the day, saying, "These are today's ingredients."
You can tell they're fresh at a glance!
Then he began by making garlic chips.

The appetizer was a goya (bitter melon) gazpacho with ricotta cheese.

In summer, bitter vegetables and herbs are delicious! Gazpacho is usually tomato-based, so this was a surprise, and the acidity whets your appetite as a first dish!

Next, abalone and pork are grilled.

The abalone is wriggling in a "dancing grill" state! The pork is placed on a shell ginger leaf, topped with miso, and cooked.

The first teppanyaki dish was Yanbaru island pork steamed in shell ginger leaf.

The Yanbaru pork comes with a sauce of black sesame and Kumejima miso, with shredded white leek on top and the aroma of the shell ginger leaf, and it's incredibly delicious.

By the way, this dish can't be ordered a la carte and was only in this course, so I felt lucky!

While we ate, he showed us the preparation for the jushi (Okinawan mixed rice) cooked in a small pot.

Thinking about it calmly, cooking rice on a teppan griddle is kind of amazing, lol

And here is the second teppanyaki dish, "Live Abalone with Grilled Eggplant."

The abalone was sautéed so tenderly that the umami bursts out when you bite into it, and I was swooning... The aroma of the dill was lovely too.

And then the main steak! We had Okinawan Japanese black beef sirloin and filet.

The vegetable sides were goya, kabocha squash, and shiitake mushrooms, plus garlic chips.

Another side was bread toasted in the fat from cooking the beef, soaking up the meat's umami!

Eating it with the Ishigaki Island salt is simple and delicious.

It's also great with the garlic chips (just looking back at the photos makes me drool, lol)

The meat was incredibly fine-grained and tender!
The marbling is perfectly balanced, so it's light and never heavy!

Meanwhile, the pot-cooked rice was ready!

We had the white rice turned into garlic rice.

The pot-cooked jushi was cooked beautifully too!

Jushi, garlic rice, miso soup, and goya and daikon pickles.

Steaming hot rice, fresh from the pot, full of chunks of tender pork......

This was without a doubt the best jushi I've ever had!

I was incredibly full.

For dessert, we moved to a table seat next to the counter.

At the table, dessert was an exotic ball and pineapple sorbet, so refreshing!

I swapped my coffee for a café latte and finished with small sweets.

Stuffed, I staggered back to the room, lol. At night the courtyard was lit up and beautiful.

Who Kise at The Ritz-Carlton, Okinawa Is Good For

The quality of the ingredients was truly excellent.

In particular, the abalone, the Yanbaru island pork steamed in shell ginger leaf, and the jushi were three unforgettable flavors.

If you stay at The Ritz-Carlton, Okinawa, please, please go to this restaurant at least once!