Naha, Okinawa

November 4-7, 2025

   

After a wonderful visit with Matt and his wife, Michael and I moved on to Naha, Okinawa. This was a fascinating place, popular with Japanese tourists, and rich with its own distinct cultural traditions that draw from its Pacific geography and coral reefs, and centuries of trade with Japan, China, and Korea. We bounced between seeking veg-friendly foods from general vendors (soba, Nepalese, convenience stores and museum cafes) and visiting veg-specific venues. Here are a few highlights.

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We fell upon Mana with relief and delight after a string of improvised meals - each day they offer one vegan meal set, with an emphasis on local and organic ingredients, for ¥1500 ~ AU$14. We were blessed with a bowl of silky pumpkin soup, brown rice, a generous tumble of teriyaki soy meat, tempura shiso leaf, quinoa with green papaya, stir-fried bamboo and burdock (a new fave!), mustard greens and loofah in miso and vinegar, pickled rosella and green papaya, and a fresh wedge of dragonfruit to finish. The cafe was quiet, calm and spacious; everything we needed.

   

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Kuninda sat oddly on a street full of plastic souvenirs and gimmicky foods - it's a starkly modern, high-end restaurant that celebrates local Ryukyu cuisine. While omnivorous eaters a treated to a multi-stage banquet for dinner (and we observed our fellow diners' dishes with interest), veg*ns receive the same multi-dish plate that they would if attending for lunch (¥3500 ~ AU$34). It's still a very special experience with carefully composed local flavours.

We began with a small sample of Ryukyu moromi vinegar, a fermented by-product of the manufacture of awamori, a local spirit distilled from rice. (Among their non-alcoholic drinks was Shikuwasa juice, a native citrus, that I enjoyed very much.) The main plate was a beautiful selection not best photographed in the restaurant lighting: miso soup and rice, jimami tofu (made entirely of peanuts and not soy! has a more elastic texture and is lightly dressed in sweet soy), nigana (a green leafy vegetable) dressed with tofu and sesame (a familiar preparation style from Idées), deep-fried taro (a local staple), tempura vegetables, pickled vegetables including bitter gourd (another local staple), tofu sauteed with carrots, and a special salt-based seasoning. The meal concluded with a small taste of zenzai, sweetened red beans simmered in Okinawan brown sugar and salt, accompanied by jasmine tea.

The meal was very memorable and the service was flawless - the only shame was that, having been served most of it all at once, it was over too quickly.

   

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Our time in Okinawa was brief and, unluckily for us, was mostly spread across the weeknights that smaller venues aren't open. We were able to try Tamatebako for our last dinner - it's a small, densely-packed vegan ramen bar run by two jovial young men. More notable than the ramen was the array of local delicacies were tried there: more jimami/peanut tofu (¥700 ~ AU$7, above), a small cube of richly-textured and fermented tofuyo (¥700 ~ AU$7, below), and a bowl of sea grapes (¥600 ~ AU$6, below).

   

Michael had plenty of appetite to work through their coconut curry laksa (¥1400 ~ AU$13, below right), while I more slowly picked through a bowl of ma jiang mian (¥1400 ~ AU$13, below left), noodles in sesame paste topped with a welcome medley of tofu and fresh vegetables, and fine threads of chilli. The homemade ginger syrup (¥700 ~ AU$7, background) was much more ginger than syrup, and I nursed it across the entire meal. Michael finished with a taste of the awamori spirit on ice, of which they offered many varieties. We were glad to have such a cosy, distinctly Okinawan experience on our last night on the island.

   

Idées Kamakura

November 2, 2025  

   

In November, Michael and I made a long-overdue visit to Japan, where Michael's brother Matt has lived for almost two decades. It was fantastic to experience the neighbourhood where Matt and his wife live, including a couple of local restaurants, their community garden plot, a cultural festival, a short hike to a lookout for a picnic, and a sculpture garden. Matt also arranged for Michael and I to attend a vegan Japanese cooking class via Idées Kamakura. The class is hosted by 94-year-old Miyo sensei in her own home, and translated warmly into English by her daughter Naoko.

 

Once we were through introductions, Miyo sensei set us to work with chopping. They had cute little flower-shaped cutters for the carrots, which then went into a pot of kombu kelp dashi stock and sake, along with taro and pumpkin pieces, to simply simmer in the flavour.

Michael and I got to know gobo (also known as burdock in English), a long thin root vegetable with an earthy flavour. We kept the pieces submerged in cold water as we worked, and cut carrot into similarly small bite-sized lengths.

   

Naoko guided us through a tasting of different miso pastes, each with a unique origin, ratio of ingredients, and flavour profile. The Hatcho miso was dark, long-fermented and strongly flavoured, reminding me of Vegemite. Mugi barley miso was the lightest coloured option, with a gentle pungency that reminded me of blue cheese. My favourite was a bright, salty, golden-coloured and grainy textured miso. It was labelled 'miso zwate' but I haven't been able to find this description online since.

This now-mysterious miso was used in a dressing, ground together walnuts, mirin and sugar in my preferred ratio. In a second dressing, Naoko had me use soy sauce instead of miso. For a third dressing, I ground umeboshi (salted plum) with mirin and agave for a sweet and sour effect. We ultimately spooned a little of each into separate bowls of lightly steamed broccoli to appreciate their distinct flavours and textures.

   

The burdock and similarly-sliced carrots were stir-fried until tender and flavoured with sesame oil, sake, sugar and soy sauce. Miyo sensei got them started, then Michael and I took our turns tossing them around.

   

In parallel, Miyo sensei showed me how to grind roasted sesame seeds with suribachi and surikogi (traiditonal Japanese mortar and pestle), then mix in silken tofu. This mixture did double duty. First, it was seasoned with sugar, salt and soy sauce, and mixed with finely chopped vegetables to form a small, cool, salad side dish. Second, it was used to stuff potato starch-dusted mushroom caps as a 'mock abalone'; these were fried on both sides and brushed with teriyaki sauce.

I had whisked up the teriyaki sauce to taste (soy sauce, mirin and sugar). It was used primarily to flavour squares of pressed tofu that had been dusted with potato starch and fried until just golden. The tofu and mushroom caps are plated together, below.

   

Somehow (through Miyo's more than our efforts) a banquet was created! Steamed green beans and mushrooms appeared to accompany the simmered vegetables. Edamame were cooked into the rice in a large rice cooker, then moulded into a thick arc shape. There were pickled vegetables and huge, slightly sweet hana-mame beans, plus a beautiful tofu noodle soup.

   

It was a beautiful, expansive meal that I savoured slowly. Naoko spoke to us about the philosophy of Nihon Ryori (Japanese cuisine): five tastes, colours and methods. The aim is to capture a variety across the meal: sweet, salty, sour, spicy, bitter, pale/natural, umami; black, white, red, yellow, green; simmering; pan-frying, deep frying, stir frying, steaming, pickling, dressing, soup, rice, sweet.

To properly tick off that last category, there was still a little more to come.

   

Miyo sensei kneaded a dense dough of shiratamako (refined glutinous rice powder) and water, and we all gathered around to form small dumplings and drop them into boiling water. They only took a minute to cook! We ate them for dessert with unflavoured kanten (agar agar jelly cubes), sweet azuki beans, and black sugar syrup. After taking the below photo, I also sprinkled over some kinako (soybean powder).

   

It was such an honour to learn from Miyo sensei and Naoko in their home! They welcomed us with warmth and immense generosity, we deeply enjoyed the food that we shared, and we've started replicating a couple of these techniques at home.

Cumbé

October 24, 2025

   

The bright orange panels at Cumbé caught my eye on Sydney Rd before they'd even opened, and I was excited to see that this would be another sandwich shop. (It's a trend I'm firmly in favour of.) More specifically, Cumbé is focused on Mexican tortas, offering a compact list of tortas/bowls alongside pies and sausage rolls. There's a lot of pork going on but also one vegetarian option in each category - a pie of roast pumpkin and lentils ($10) and chilaquiles con huevo ($16 as torta/$15 as bowl). 

Michael and I snuck in for a work-from-home day lunch and both sampled the torta. It is immense, and immensely messy! A long roll barely containing a mostly-gooey cacophony of fried egg, ricotta-like cheese, black beans, corn chips, spicy pickled onions, coriander and fresh chilli. I enjoyed the ride but got off early; Michael saw through his and the rest of mine. This situation clearly isn't built for vegans and I'm not sure that I'm built for it. I bet Michael will be back for another round, though.

   

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Cumbé

551 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

menu

instagram page

Accessibility: Cumbé has a flat entry to a low counter. There's a mix of high benches with backless stools by the window, and regular height tables with backless stools and bench seats. We ordered and paid at the low counter, and received food at our table. We didn't visit the toilets.

 

Chickpea & artichoke salad

October 6, 2025

   

Michael was away for work, and I wanted to stock the fridge with a couple of durable salads to rely on across the week. This one was so deep in my bookmarks that I needed the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to retrieve it! It's a natural and appealing mix of artichoke hearts and chickpeas, both browned in a pan, then dressed with lemon juice, olive oil and some green herbs, finished with almonds.

This fit the brief perfectly. I first ate it alongside beetroot and rhubarb salad and vegetarian sausage rolls, and in a few other configurations as the week went on.

Chickpea & artichoke salad

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Ricki Heller)

5 tablespoons olive oil, and/or oil from the jar of artichoke hearts

juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons dried or 2 tablespoons fresh basil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup flaked almonds

1 x 400g can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 x 280g jar artichoke hearts, drained and quartered (reserve oil, if included)

2 cloves garlic, minced

In a medium-large bowl, whisk together 3 tablespoons of oil, lemon juice, basil, oregano, parsley and salt. Set aside.

Set a frypan over medium heat and gently toast the flaked almonds until they're starting to brown and they smell great. Remove them from the pan.

Pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil into the frypan. Add the chickpeas to the oil and cook them for about 10 minutes, until they start to brown. Transfer the chickpeas from the pan to the bowl.

Add 1 more tablespoon of olive oil to the frypan. Place the artichoke hearts in the pan and cook until they're well browned on that side, then turn them to brown them on another side. Add the garlic and stir it all together for a minute, then transfer the artichoke hearts and garlic to the bowl. Stir everything together well, then sprinkle over the flaked almonds.

Kariton Sorbetes II

October 5, 2025

   

Even since before my first visit, I've been coveting the sundaes at Kariton Sorbetes and waiting for the time and place to try one. I made the time after a Sunday rally in the city and pounced on a small Taho ($11) - it's a still-generous swirl of silken tofu soft serve, a decent spoonful of soy milk pannacotta, and a drip of small tapioca pearls in oolong tea syrup. After years of resistance, I think I'm finally getting the hang of soy milk as a dessert - and this is a fine way to do it without any masking of the flavour. Even so, I would have liked a little more of that dark tea syrup to distribute across the cup.

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You can read about our first visit to Kariton here. You can also read about the various Kariton outlets on Sweet & Sour Fork, Mamma Knows East, Mamma Knows West and The Resolved Wanderer.

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Kariton Sorbetes 

177 Russell St, Melbourne CBD 

menu 

https://www.karitonsorbetes.com/ 

Accessibility: Kariton Sorbetes has a flat entry and somewhat narrow, roped queuing system. There are few seats, mostly low backless stools. I ordered, paid, and picked up our icecreams at a low counter. I didn't visit the toilets.