Approximately 1 hour and 48 minutes by car from Naha Airport. It is a café and chocolate factory located in Ogimi Village in the northern part of Okinawa’s main island. It is one of the few stores that grow domestically produced cacao, and once you try their rich-tasting chocolate, you will become addicted. Visitors can also have valuable experiences such as making chocolate and visiting cacao fields.
Point 1: Located far inland from Route 58! What is the location of OKINAWA CACAO?
OKINAWA CACAO is a café and chocolate factory located in Ogimi Village in the northern part of Okinawa’s main island.
It has its own cacao farm and is one of the few chocolate studios that cultivate cacao from the ground up, and the attached cafe serves chocolate tarts and drinks made from cacao.
It takes about 1 hour and 48 minutes from Naha Airport via Okinawa Expressway and National Route 58.
From Route 58, before the Tagari River, you will enter the inland area, but since it is a straight road, you will rarely get lost.
By bus, take the Okinawa Airport Shuttle OAS/RSL-RP to “Nago Shiyakusho-mae” (Nago City Hall), then take Ryukyu Bus No. 67 from “Hokubu-godo-chosha-mae” (Hokubu Joint Government Building), an 8-minute walk from there. Get off at “Hama” and walk for 17 minutes.
The building of Cafe Kobo looks like a private house, but you can easily recognize it as a cafe because of the streamers.
Point 2: Introduction of the“OKINAWA CACAO” cafe menu!
The most popular drink at the “OKINAWA CACAO” café is the “Chocolate Drink” shown in the photo.
You can choose between Karaki flavor (cinnamon) or Ghanaian chocolate with 70% cacao content, and either milk or soy milk.
With milk, you can taste a bit of sweetness, and with soy milk, it is light but has a rich flavor, so even though it is the same drink, you can feel two different flavors.
Also available is the Seekwasa Soda.
The fresh juice is squeezed into the drink, giving it a refreshing sourness that is irresistible and full of Okinawan flavor.
The café also offers tarts made with chocolate, and especially in the coming season, Christmas chocolate tarts and bûche de Noël, which have a strong cacao flavor, will also be available.
These are eat-in only, so if you want to try them, please visit the site!
Point 3: Introduction of “OKINAWA CACAO” chocolate!
OKINAWA CACAO’s chocolates include chocolate boards, dried fruits covered with chocolate, bonbon chocolates, and baked goods.
The chocolate boards are not only high in cacao pigment, but also contain Awamori, Karaki (cinnamon), seekersaa, and shell Gingko nuts, all of which are typical of Okinawa.
Also, as in Okinawa, there are products with chocolate-covered tropical fruits such as green mango, Nakijin watermelon, and pineapple, which look very tasty!
These products are also sold by mail order in stylish packaging and are sometimes sold at local morning markets and other events in major cities, so check the store’s Instagram for more details!
Although Okinawa produces cacao, the harvest is not very large, so there are some problems in the fermentation process, and because of the high humidity, even if the cacao has fermented well, it sometimes becomes moldy, which is an upcoming issue.
We would like to keep a warm eye on the future of chocolate production using precious domestic cacao.
Today we introduced OKINAWA CACAO, a café and chocolate factory in Ogimi Village.
Rich chocolates and sweets made with domestically produced cacao. The amount of cacao harvested is still very small, so it is truly precious.
The shop also offers chocolate-making and cacao farm tours, so if you are interested, please visit the shop.
