Today I ate lunch at a sweet little Italian café in Naha called, “Café Barvale,” with Steph and a group of her friends. I was incredibly impressed that the owner even has “blood orange juice” on the menu! We had blood orange juice all the time while we were in Italy!
After driving past the NEOS store in Naha, you turn left at the third light, directly across from Kanehide. After a short, winding drive on a narrow road, you find yourself in “Minatogawa – Stateside Town.” It is an area made up of old base housing that’s been returned to Okinawa. Some of the houses are remaining houses, but others are now tiny cafes.
The “streets” are named after States – Arizona, Oregon, Michigan, Arkansas, etc. Café Barvale is located on Georgia Street – and they even make their own pasta!
I chose the pork and mushroom pasta in cream sauce set.
The first course was “salad.” Amazing pumpkin quiche, bean paste on cracker, pickled cubed veggies, fish with tomato on top, and leafy greens. (And no, Mama, I haven’t started eating pickled things yet. Steph’s friend enjoyed finishing off my “salad.”)
They brought out small loaves of homemade bread to go with our pastas. The pasta and cream sauce were wonderful. Any time the café owner/server/co-chef wasn’t looking, I snuck mushrooms from my dish to Steph’s. Usually in the States I can just pick out the couple of mushrooms and leave them. Here, they are VERY generous in the number of mushrooms they can successfully shove into your bowl. There’s no eating around them and leaving them. Thankfully, Steph likes mushrooms,
Then came the wonderful dessert! A slice of delicate cake with two banana slices, two small cookies, and a not-sugary-sweet icing. The chocolate cake was incredibly dense and puckeringly bitter. Mixed with the sweet vanilla ice cream it was positively perfect!
Overall, a very good lunch. We especially enjoyed how every course was detailed and picture-perfect pretty! What a treat!