Pot Belly "Southern European Cuisine"

Pot Belly is a good restaurant just a short drive or pleasant walk from the base. Located well off Blue Street, you'll find that not many Americans make it over to this side street cafe. But they are welcoming and "ready" for you.

Store front

Pot Belly claims to serve up Southern European cuisine. By looking at their menu it seems they deliver on this claim, with the possible exception of the "American clubhouse sandwich" and maybe the sashimi platters. I toiled trying to link the origin of the club sandwich to Europe. But it seems it truly is an American creation based on official sandwich origin historical references. As far as sashimi, its origin seems safely away from the European continent too.

One of the best things about Pot Belly besides their good food is that they have 3 or 4 parking spots directly in front of their shop. In the photo above, the spots are on the right side of the photo. The one with the yellow sign to the left is not for Pot Belly so don't park there even if the shop next door is closed. If their spots are full, turn right at the next intersection and you'll see a pay parking lot which is very convenient to the restaurant.

Pot Belly has an English menu so be sure to ask for it. As far as the daily lunch specials which are in Japanese only, they will be able to assist you with enough English to help you understand what they're offering for the day.

Pot Belly is about a block from City Hall. Find it on the blog map or by clicking on the location link below. The restaurant and chef/owner have been around for over 20 years.

The interior is comfortable and clean. There are some seats along the window, a few counter seats, and then towards the back of the L shaped seating area as well. You can see many more photos of the food and restaurant on the Tabelog website.

Typically there are three set lunches on the menu every day. Their website will post them (before lunch I believe). Unfortunately, their online menu is in Japanese, but if you know some key food Kanji you'll be able to figure out what they are fairly easily.

In this particular Pot Belly lunch menu below (as an example):

In the A set, we can see the words chicken　鶏, meat　肉, and vegetables　野菜. もも or momo means thigh. So you have chicken thigh meat and vegetables. This dish is a stew.

In the B set, you can see the Kanji for fish 魚 and 焼き baked. So it's some kind of baked fish.

In the C set, the only Kanji's we might recognize are water 水 and the second half of vegetables 菜 (it's a mustard green).
The katakana tells us it also has bacon ベーコン in it and it's a pasta パスタ dish. Bacon=good so don't even worry about the Kanji. No further reading required.

Learning Katakana is very useful for identifying the food you are about to eat in town and will let you expand your dining options beyond CoCo Curry. :-)