Restaurant Okinawan Diner Nirai - Kania is something that *Shinta and I stumbled over one day, while visiting Mediya at Liang Court. It's one of the "older" restaurants there, not part of the newly outfitted areas at the 2nd and 3rd floor, but situated down in the basement.
The place is decorated like a bar with cosy wooden stools and benches. You can either sit with your friends in the little alcoves, or sit at the bar if you're alone. We like this place because even though *Shinta and I already have a few favourite "must order dishes", there are still lots more new ones for us to try and discover.First order of the day is the Kawa Ebi or river shrimp that I absolutely MUST order each time I come. In fact, we usually come here because I have a craving for it. The little crispy fried shrimp come with a lemon (optional) and sea salt dip (nice kick but use sparingly) that you eat whole and as quickly as possible while its still warm. I could technically eat the whole basket myself, but *Shinta doesn't let me. Oh and its fantastic with beer!!!
The Seaweed Soup is a nice warm comparatively healthy dish that we like to order. It tastes nice and fresh with not too much "sea taste". I suspect the standard is not too consistent though, because I didn't like it as much this time as I did other times...
Stewed pork done the Japanese way! If you don't eat pork fat, or if you're the type who cuts away the fat, please don't bother to order this. You would just be wasting 2/3 of the dish! When you put the meat in your mouth, it just melts away. Try not to think about your arteries when eating this... Definately not something you can eat every week.
The next order was a new one for us. There's a proper name for it, but I can't recall what, so its probably more aptly just described as "Deep Fried Pork Knuckle". Pretty good and extremely unhealthy, I'm not sure which is "worse", this one or the one before. Basically the crispy skin and fatty meat fall off the bone very easily. It's also great to take the bone and suck the crispy bits off.
Seaweed Tempura was something we hadn't tried before. It was really good! Very light, a little oily perhaps for some... You can choose to dip it in the vinegar provided (rather than the usual tempura sauce) or eat it neat. Wished I had a mug of beer when I was eating this.
On all our previous visits, we had ordered the Taco Fried Rice. Not being a fan of tacos, I wasn't too fond of it, although *Shinta was happy enough. This time however, we decided to try the Garlic Fried Rice. It's probably one of the best I have ever tasted. The rice was a little more damp than normal, but still very fluffy. It was flavoured not just with garlic, but I suspect the cooked the rice in some meat stock of some kind, otherwise it couldn't have tasted so good. Excellent stuff!
The colour in the photo doesn't show it too well, but the sweet potato ice-cream was actually a very nice lavender purple. I always thought sweet potatoes were orange in colour, but the menu specifically said purple as well, so its probably some special type from Japan. It was sweet but not overly cloying. Nice.
This was our first time ordering the Crepe for dessert. The soft brown crepe was warm, soft and fluffy, tasting very much like gula melaka (palm sugar). This was probably due to the brown sugar used, which had also changed the color of the crepe from the usual light yellow, to a darker brown. As you can see, the crepe came accompannied by a huge bowl of whipped cream which matched the sweetness of the crepe quite well. The scariest part is that we actually finished the entire bowl of cream between us! I dare not think how many calories that was...
Alas it was a work night, we didn't order any alcohol. But you can definately consider trying one of their unique sodas or just go for the usual sake and/or beer. It's just nice to gulp down with the food while chilling out with friends.
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Okinawan Diner Nirai - Kanai
177 River Valley Road, #B1-01/02 Liang Court
Tel: +65-6339 4811
Hours: 12pm - 10.30pm
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