Shakey's- Okinawa Style!

October 2008

Way back in October, Mike and I decided to give Shakey's Pizza a try for lunch. We haven't had Shakey's in...like, Forever! But it was a place we used to love to go way back when.

It's apparently a very popular place here- we had tried to go before, but the boys were too hungry to wait the 30 minutes plus minutes to be seated. Even today, on a week day, there was a 10 minute wait.

They do not serve salad (we were very sad!), but did have pizza, jojos, curry rice, chicken broth, drinks and dessert. One difference is that you use the same plate the entire time- no clean plate each time you go up like in American buffets. I will tell you, we did not see a single Okinawan leave any food on their plate. If they took it, they ate it. A far cry from the gross waste of food you see in stateside buffets.

The pizza was....interesting! Lets see if I can remember the kinds we they had:
Cheese
Pepperoni
Pepperoni with corn
Pepperoni with bell peppers
Salad Pizza : this had to be the funniest one- just a baked pizza crust with lettuce, tomato and ranch dressing...no sauce. It was literally a plain pizza crust with a salad dumped on top! (very popular thou!)
Wasabi Pizza with Octopus (at least that is what we THINK the white chewy rings were). Slivers of dried seaweed on top. Believe it or not, this was my favorite!
Sausage with tomatoes
Hawaiian
One we couldn't figure out- sauce was dark and it had tiny bits of broccoli, octopus, and other unidentified objects. Good, just didn't know what it was (and that may be a good thing!).

Definitely different choices then your typical American Pizza! Very little meat- the pepperoni and sausage pizzas were more cheese then meat.

The rice and curry was good- very good actually. We tried the soup just because it was there- think it was just a plain chicken broth. Tasted good, but seemed a strange thing to have with the other stuff. But then again, I wouldn't serve curry and rice with pizza either!

The desserts were typical Okinawa...as in not very sweet. One was a pizza crust with tiny bits of pineapple (cooked) then drizzled with a bit of chocolate sauce and lightly dusted with powdered sugar. Okay, but not worth seconds. They also had sweet rolls- looked like cinnamon rolls but not quite. One kind was plain (no icing), the other had a bit of chocolate syrup drizzled over the top.

They had a table set up with pitchers of oolong tea and iced tea (the oolong tea was much milder than the ice tea). The soda dispensers included a cold, very strong, coffee, hot coffee out of a machine and an orange slushie drink (these types of drinks, similar to slurpees are popular here). The soda dispensers are a bit different- there is only one dispenser spigot- no matter which soda you choose, it comes out of the one spigot. You just push the button of which soda you want. We are used to the American dispensers which have a separate spigot for each flavor of soda. No diet soda- just Grape Fanta, Root Beer, Coke, and a melon Fanta (or maybe it was green apple?)...and the cold coffee.

We enjoyed lunch, and the experience, but doubt we'll go back. A bit pricey at 950 Yen for lunch.
Sorry I didn't take any pictures of the pizza- I didn't take in a camera and would have felt funny taking pictures (we were the only Americans there).