Nabura

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch
Price:   1500 yen
Payment:  Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  Cold seaweed soba, vegetable tempura basket, fish miso soup
English Menu:Yes
Smoking: No

My wife and I ate at Nabura a while back when the Yokosuka Port Market first opened and we really enjoyed it.  Somewhat surprising since they are a mostly Japanese seafood restaurant and we don't always go in for that kind of thing.  Hadn't been back since, so since I had the car again today (more mail to pick up) I hopped off base to have lunch there.  There is a big parking lot right next to it and you can get your parking ticket validated at the restaurant, so that's a plus.

The English menu provides more than just information...it provides entertainment!  And sometimes confusion.  It appears to have been run through Google translate and then copied and pasted.  There are some true gems in there.   However, the confusion came when I ordered some "Oh, juice" which my entree said it didn't come with.  No problem there.  Then when my meal showed up...there was no juice.  So I asked the waitress...where was the juice.  She looked puzzled.  So I pointed in the menu to where I had ordered the "Oh, juice" and she pointed at my fish miso soup.  Then I looked at the actual Japanese words and saw the kanji for soup (汁 aka "shiru") at the end.  Well that would have been nice to see earlier.  Oh well, despite my embarrassment, the food was great.

Tons of food

But it was way too much!  Expecting typical Japanese portions I had ordered a large rice bowl, which along with the soup, was entirely unnecessary.  I could only eat a few bites of it by the end.  The dominant feature of the dish was the humongous tangle of tempura fried onion, carrot and goodness knows what.  It was so big I had trouble ripping bits off with my chopsticks to eat it.  And the soba was delicious, with a hint of seaweed flavor to it, bathed in ice, and perfect for dipping in the wasabi and ginger infused dipping broth.  The fish miso soup was a disappointment, not least because it wasn't "Oh, juice".  It was fine for miso, but I didn't really detect much contribution from the fish bits inside, and the meat itself was very scarce and filled with nasty bones.

And now I will try to fight off sleepiness as my body tries to digest all that food.  Nabura gets a "Very Good".