Yakiniku Kazuchan: Grilled Meat on Kokusai-dori, Okinawa

This is my review of Yakiniku Kazuchan, a yakiniku restaurant right on Kokusai-dori in Naha, Okinawa. I’ve put together the dishes I tried myself, from the Kobe beef special short rib, Agu pork belly and Ishigaki beef to skirt steak and beef offal, along with the prices (as of September 2025) and how to reserve and pay.

👋 Haisai! I’m CULT.
Today I’m just going to chat casually about a restaurant in Okinawa. This time it’s Yakiniku Kazuchan. I wasn’t very interested in this place, but travelers kept asking me about it, so with all that interest, I went to check it out myself. It’s right on Kokusai-dori, so it’s very easy to get to.

The restaurant is on the ground floor. Studying Japanese throws up annoying words like this one. The kanji for “house” in the name is read differently depending on the situation, but then, Japanese is still the easy one.. Czech has so many things like that that, compared with Czech, I’ve found Japanese much less of a hassle.. Anyway, a white sign reading Yakiniku Kazuchan hangs out front.
By the way, there’s a wait even on weekday evenings.

Yakiniku Kazuchan is on the west side of Kokusai-dori. It’s right on the main road, so it’s easy to find, and Cherry Cherry, an izakaya I like, is nearby too. Anyway, ⏰ it’s open every day from 4 p.m. to midnight (as of September 2025). You can reserve through Google Maps, so I recommend booking before you go.

A Roundup of Cheap Parking Lots Near Kokusai-dori
It’s a roundup of cheap parking lots around Kokusai-dori, but.. anyone going to a place like Yakiniku Kazuchan probably doesn’t worry much about spending money on food, so would they even need it? I’m not sure.

I booked for 7:20 p.m., and I took this photo at around 7:15 p.m. As you can see, this is the whole restaurant. There’s one more chair on the right that you can’t see.

First, I sit down and order some draft beer. Just ask for nama biru (draft beer).
My taste in beer is as ridiculously refined as ever.. so Orion beer is, well.. if you’ve only ever had Korean beer, you’ll probably think it tastes great.

Everyone here really knows how to flatter the customers. They’re enthusiastic and keep the atmosphere fun, so overall I get the feeling this place is rated very highly by foreign visitors. The food is pretty decent too.

The appetizer I had was senmai, the omasum. That’s a cow’s stomach.
I’ve tried senmai in Okinawa too, and apparently the Kansai style and the Okinawa style are different from each other. In Okinawa, you eat it with salt and sesame oil. So the mainland and Okinawa each have their own style, you see.

Dress the senmai with salt and sesame oil, dip it in chojang sauce, and take a bite. It’s delicious. Its distinctive texture is firm and chewy, and the flavor is light.

I started with the recommended skirt steak. It’s recommended item number 2, but after ordering it I felt it was a bit of a mistake. I shouldn’t have ordered marinated meat to begin with.. Once the marinade gets on the grill, it changes the taste of all the meat that follows.

Here’s a detailed look at the meat. I got a request on Reddit, so I’ve been taking photos like this. The seasoning seems to be based on soy sauce and garlic.

The meat is a little thick, but it cooks very fast. If you relax even a little, it burns, so you have to grill it quickly.

I usually can’t be bothered and just put the photos in a gallery, but this time I’m showing the close-ups individually. Please, look at these photos in the dead of night and get mad.

As for the texture.. hmm.. it’s just good meat. I took detailed close-ups, so you can more or less imagine the taste just by looking at them.

This is seriously expensive meat. 6,500 yen for a single plate like this

It’s very expensive meat, so you have to get the grilling right.

As I grilled the meat, I thought.. I’ve ordered these in the wrong order.. but there’s still hope, because the grill isn’t too coated in sauce yet.

There are six pieces, so each bite works out to about 10,000 KRW -_-;;
Of course it’s good meat, so the texture is great and it’s delicious. But this one.. is for rich people only. I ordered it to show you. Anyway, if you look at this photo at night, well.. you can write off your diet.

Next I moved on to pork: Agu pork belly. 1,500 yen
Agu is my favorite pig breed. It’s a traditional Okinawan breed.. and this is absolutely amazing.

Unlike regular pork, Agu pork.. even the fat is incredibly rich and savory. It’d be fantastic as tonkatsu too.

Agu is an expensive breed too, and the reason it’s only 1,500 yen is.. it’s basically shaved-thin pork belly -_-;;
It cooks extremely fast, so you have to flip it quickly and eat it quickly.

You dip it in a sauce that has garlic, onion, scallion, soy sauce, grated radish and so on and on and on.

Having seen this meat, your diet is history, heh heh heh..
And the taste is.. incredible again. Of all the meat I had today, this was my favorite. Savory, thin-sliced pork belly

Rice is rice.
Korean rice is glossy and moderately sticky, while Japanese rice is much stickier and its sheen feels a bit duller.

Next is beef offal. 1,200 yen
I heard they call this horumon. What? Hormone?
This is one of the seasoned meats, so the server asks: salt or miso? I didn’t want to dirty the grill, so I went with salt.

Maybe because the meat holds a lot of moisture, it also gives off a lot of smoke. Maybe that’s why it sounded a bit different when grilling too. Instead of a sizzle, it was more of a looong ssssssssizzle?

Even I think the way I shot this is downright cruel.

I put it on rice and take a bite.
The salt seasoning was a little weak, so it got lost in the rice. After that I just ate the meat on its own.

You want to eat it, don’t you?

Next is Ishigaki beef loin. 2,200 yen
From here I decide to dirty the grill and order mostly marinated meat.

Again, the meat cooks very fast.

This is Ishigaki beef, nicely cooked with its marinade.
You can tell it’s delicious without even tasting it.

I try making beef sushi. Of course, there’s no vinegar, though.
It feels like eating delicious marinated beef short ribs with rice..

Next I ordered the skirt steak again. The first one was salt-seasoned, and this one is marinated in sauce. The price is the same, 1,700 yen

When you grill meat that looked like this..

It turns out like this.
Don’t you want some?

Again I put it on rice and take a bite. I’d heard the wasabi is good, so I add a little wasabi on top too..
Take a bite like this and..
Bliss..

Before I knew it, we’d finished everything. It was a really delicious dinner.

The bill was 19,280 yen for two, which came to about 180,000 KRW at the exchange rate then. You can pay by card too, of course.

We finish and leave the restaurant behind.
Basically, the staff try hard to liven things up, and I think that’s part of why the food tastes so good here. If you simply want a quiet yakiniku meal with kids, it might actually be better to go to a chain like Yakiniku King. As you can see, the restaurant has counter seating, so it’s not particularly suitable for family meals with children.
I ordered à la carte, choosing the dishes I liked, but there are set menus too, so ordering those might let you eat a bit more cheaply.

It’s a place where you can enjoy a pleasant dinner, so please consider paying a visit.

That’s it for today! Mata yasai 👋

This section is not from my visit but from the official Kazuchan website, checked on October 29, 2026. On the official menu, the A5 Kobe beef special short rib (150 g) is 7,000 yen, up from the 6,500 yen I paid. The other items are Ishigaki beef premium loin at 2,500 yen, premium skirt steak (harami) at 1,700 yen, Agu pork belly at 1,400 yen, Agu pork with ponzu at 1,500 yen and premium offal at 1,200 yen. The set menus are the Kazuchan Set at 5,100 yen, the Okinawa Special Set at 5,300 yen, the Kobe and Ishigaki Beef Set at 9,500 yen and the Japanese Black Beef Special Set at 11,200 yen. The restaurant is open from 4 p.m. to midnight (last order 11 p.m.) and closed on Mondays, and each person has to order one drink. You can reserve online or by phone (050-1808-4939 up to the day before, 090-5322-8989 on the same day). There is also a second branch on Kokusai-dori in Naha (3-26-2 Kumoji, 1st floor of the next one building).