Farm girl eats pig's ears for the first time

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ordering food in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and can't read the menu is always an adventure.

Friday night Benny and I had dinner at a restaurant that specializes in Okinawa food at a Hail and Farewell with the Navy officers. One of the officers, who always picks the best places to eat, selected this restaurant.

After we were seated the waitress brought us several English menus. But those don't have any pictures, so you really don't know the size of the dish that you are ordering. As a rule of thumb though, the serving sizes are much smaller in Japan than in America. So it is best to order two dishes and if you are still hungry order an additional plate.

I asked Regina for any recommendations and she said everything is good here. She noted that she doesn't even look at the English menu. She just points to one of the pictures and "has never been disappointed."

I glanced through the Japanese picture menu and selected a soup of sorts with seafood in a red broth. We also got a goya champura (salad of sorts) and bowl of edaname. We saw a listing for the "Okinawa speciality sampler" dish, so we decided to order that too and split it, even though there wasn't a picture.

So imagine my laughter when the waitress brought us this plate:



At first I was laughing because Benny and I plan to "share" this dish that was portioned for miniature people. Then I was really laughing because I didn't know what anything was on the plate and all the other Americans were scared of it.

Luckily Benny has been tasting a lot of Japanese foods at buffets with his co-workers, so he was able to identify many of the items, including the pig's ears pictured at 10 o'clock on the plate. He has had pig's ears before. I had not.

So I dug in and ate it along with the tofu, seaweed and mysterious other squares.

I have to say the pig ears were tasty. But I was kind of disappointed that they didn't look like a pig's ear anymore. That would be a much funnier photo for the blog.