Another thing I wanted to do in Okinawa was to try a proper afternoon tea set. Not because Okinawa is famous for its afternoon tea but because my fascination with tea led to a fascination with afternoon tea. After a lot of googling, I decided on the set from the Lobby Lounge at the Ritz Carlton as it had the best reviews and was near our place in Onna.

Getting There & The Lobby Lounge
The Ritz Carlton is located opposite Busena Marine Park. I thought that I could walk from the marine park to the Ritz Carlton and while it’s definitely possible, it’s also a fairly long walk (at least it is in the heat). Go in cooler weather or take a taxi (Parking is supposed to be available, but I didn’t see a parking lot).

Surprisingly, the Ritz Carlton lobby was empty when I arrived. There was a bell-hop, but he was busy helping a hotel guest with the luggage. Luckily, I saw a staff member pass by and she cheerfully showed me to The Lobby Lounge.

The Lobby Lounge is a bright and airy place. There’s indoor and outdoor seating, with the outdoor seating near something that looks like a pool (I didn’t see anyone swimming in it, so it might just be ornamental). I sat outside at first, but it was pretty hot and when one of the staff asked if I wanted to move inside, I gladly accepted.

Speaking of service, the staff were all very friendly and spoke English (I spoke in English to one and they all spoke in English thereafter). It was a little hard to get their attention at times because there were only two of them, but they did come as soon as I managed to make eye contact. I think it’s more of too many guests thing because once I got their attention, the service was very good.

Photos of the place:

Is this a pool? You decide

 

The inside

 

 

 

My table

The Afternoon Tea
There are two types of afternoon tea provided. One is the ‘Ritz Carlton Classic Afternoon Tea’, which is what I ordered. The other is ‘The Ritz Carlton, Ryukyu Afternoon Tea’, which features bukubuku tea as part of the set. Both sets cost 3,800 yen before taxes, although if you choose to have a glass of champagne with the classic afternoon tea, it will set you back 5,500 yen (before taxes).

Since I’ve already had bukubuku tea in Shuri, I decided to try the classic afternoon tea set. It was really impressive when it came out.

You can choose between iced and hot tea. At first, I assumed that I could only get one pot of tea, but it turns out that I could get more! The tea stayed warm the whole time, and I found the pot very easy to use.

The tea they used is TWG and I was really pleased to see a Singaporean brand in Okinawa. While there’s a very detailed tea menu (link below), you can also ask the staff to bring a tea tray over to let you sniff all the teas. Actually, I didn’t ask — they offered, so kudos for the attentive service.

I didn’t feel rushed to make a decision and spent a happy time going through the teas and trying to decide what to have.

In the end, I chose the Silver Moon and Earl Grey Teas and both were excellent. Silver Moon is a green tea flavoured with vanilla and berries. It’s slightly sweet and the berries and vanilla work well with the green tea. I found it to be very suited as an accompaniment to the food as it wasn’t too overpowering.

The Earl Grey Tea had a good balance of bergamot oil and tea (Earl Grey is a tricky tea for me because if the oil is too strong, it makes the tea unpleasant to drink).

Apart from the cream for the scones, there are also a variety of jams! I got to sample all of them, although I didn’t manage to catch all their names. The jams were:

– Honey: went very well with the scones
– Blueberry: also very suited for scones. This and the honey were my two favourite toppings, apart from the cream.
– Okinawa Mikan
– Some kind of citrus fruit, maybe shekwasha? I wasn’t a big fan of the citrus fruit jams. They were nice, but they didn’t really go with the scones.

The bottom layer consisted of the savouries so that’s where I started. From left to right. I had:

– Tomato soup, which was more like a savoury jelly. It sounds weird but it was pretty good.
– Beef on bread, which was decent
– Egg and cucumber sandwich: The cucumbers were around the bread instead of inside, which made holding it a little tricky, but I found myself enjoying this.
– Smoked salmon tart: this was my favourite of the savouries! So flavourful and so good!
– Some kind of fish. It was probably not a good idea to eat this after the smoked salmon because it tasted kind of bland, though there was a nice aftertaste of sorts? But this was my least favourite of the lot.
– Okinawa pork, which was decent but unremarkable.

Once I finished the savouries, I moved on to the sweets, which were in the middle row. From left to right, there was:

– Strawberry financier: the cake and the strawberries paired well with each other and I really liked this.
– Very soft cheesecake that sort of broke off when I tried to eat it.
– Chocolate mousse. This was my favourite of the sweets because both the chocolate and the berry part had very rich flavours that complemented each other perfectly.
– Mango pudding topped with chocolate – This was hard to eat in one bite.
– Matcha financier: It’s matcha, what can I say?

I wasn’t given enough spoons and I didn’t want to use the spoon for the tomato soup-jelly for the mousse so I had to flag down the staff. It wasn’t a problem in the end, but it was a bit of an inconvenience.

The last layer consisted of the scones and a pie. The pie was a sweet potato pie and while I couldn’t really taste the potato per se, the sweetness of the filling went well with the pastry. Overall, I liked it.

The scones were sweet potato, plain, and one with nuts. The sweet potato scone tasted best as it was (or just with the cream) while the plain one was perfect for the jams. Personally, I really liked these scones because they were crumbly but not too dry. The sweet potato one was very unique and the texture was almost like a dense cake and I wish I could have this in Singapore too.

Overall, I’m really glad that I came here. It is pricey but it is extremely filling and I was actually so full that I ended up skipping dinner. If you like afternoon tea and you’re in Okinawa, you’ll want to try this.

Details & Links
Address: 1343-1 Kise,Nago Okinawa, 905-0026 Japan
Operating Hours:
Monday to Friday – 11am to 8pm (last order)
Saturday and Sunday – 2pm to 6pm
Restaurant homepage 
Menu (PDF)
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