Last Updated on May 20, 2024
A new kid on the block at Borough Market
Only Murders in the Building is an hilarious whodunit set in New York where one of the lead characters, Oliver Putman (played by Martin Short), lives on dips from his favourite deli. I was dubious about this as a culinary choice until I ate at OMA. Newly opened, OMA is located in Borough Market where the restaurant options and food choices have drawn crowds for years. Some bookings – Padella being just one – are hard to come by. With David Carter at the helm of OMA – diners will recall his SMOKESTAK and the Shoreditch favourite Italian, Manteca, I do not doubt this new restaurant will be super popular. Chefs come with kudos too, Nick Molyviatis was the former head chef at Kiln in Soho while Jorge Paredes was executive chef of Sabor in Mayfair. From 21 May, the restaurant will open its covered terrace, adding 60 extra covers.
Walk through the main Borough Market arch on Bedale St, and up the stairs on the left in the passageway to reach OMA, not to be confused with Agora on the ground floor. The same team owns them. Agora is more grill-oriented with casual dining at communal tables as is appropriate for an eatery with a name that means marketplace. A huge charcoal rotisserie grills all sorts of meats for which Greece is famed. With flatbreads and mezze, this would make a great pitstop. Upstairs, there is OMA, a more formal restaurant, but still very relaxed. Since OMA takes its name from the Greek for ‘raw’, part of the concept is a crudo bar which takes pride of place. There is also a live-fire grill turning out grills and skewers. The furnishings are earthy in hue and use marble and stone alongside wood. The servers wear outfits of cream and brown, toning in with the décor and providing a sense of visual flow. On a warm Spring day, the floor-to-ceiling glass wall had some windows open through which a gentle breeze wafted along with the sound of the trains rattling on the green bridges up above Borough Market.
My memories of eating in Athens are suffused not by the rooftop restaurants with modern twists on Greek classics enjoyed while watching the illuminated Parthenon. It is of sitting in an enormous outdoor space, packed with tables, chairs and a paper tablecloth. Fluffy pitas bulging with grilled lamb, juicy red tomatoes and a few chips – this was the best meal I ate in Greece – not the most refined and certainly not the most expensive. But certainly the most memorable.
With this image whetting my appetite I perused the short yet substantial menu at OMA. It describes itself as inspired by the Greek isles and bold flavours of the Levant and further afield. That explains the Yemeni zhoug, some of the crudo dishes, the XO sauce and other touches. I was thrilled to find Greek classics like giouvetsi – my favourite Greek taverna dish. OMA rings the changes in a good way. Here giouvetsi is served with oxtail – oh happy days – a cut that can do no wrong in my view. Plus it comes with a marrow bone on the side. This traditional clay pot dish is also served with prawns which, for a pescatarian like myself, was inspired.
The menu includes sections for bread, dips, crudo, small plates, skewers, clay pots, a couple of side dishes and desserts. Of course, you will want to eat it all – at least I did – but my appetite doesn’t stretch quite far enough. It is the sort of restaurant where you message your friends before you leave to get a return visit in the diary before you pay your bill. I have done that before in Paris at restaurants where tables are like hen’s teeth. I hope that won’t be necessary here but it might.
The breads thrilled me from the start – I simply adore laffa which is a stretchy flatbread, superior in my view to pita and heavenly with dips. The breads are baked in-house and the laffa uses wildfarmed grain. It was thicker and flakier than the laffa I have eaten previously and all the better for it. I rather wished I’d ordered two portions and would do if I was stopping by for bread and dips while shopping in the area. There was also aҫma verde – a Turkish twisted bagel-type bread into which OMA rolls wild garlic and parsley butter. It was as good as it sounds, soft, slightly chewy and with a good grind of sea salt. We ate it with the ajvar, mizithra, hazelnuts’ which was a corker of a dish and just the kind I will try to recreate at home. Exactly what I want to eat on a warm Spring day. Grilled sweet, deep red peppers, served with a generous scattering of toasted hazelnuts. Beneath the peppers peeped the mizithra, a Greek whey cheese which added just the right tangy note. An Ajvarski pepper, as far as I can make out, is akin to a Romano pepper although no doubt OMA sources the real deal in Greece.
We ordered two dips from a selection of four. Salt cod xo, labneh was, I thought, a nod to the taramasalata you will find in every Greek restaurant but, this takes the idea of a fish-based dip to quite another level of rich umami flavour. On a base of cool labneh was a topping of salt cod mixed with xo sauce that is worth going to OMA for alone. Certainly the most interesting dip I’ve eaten in some time. The topping was crispy, salty, slightly spicy and oniony. You want to dive straight in. The laffa paired perfectly. Warning: once you have eaten the dips and these fabulous breads, you may find you are already realising that you ordered too many other dishes.
On entering the restaurant one walks past a crudo bar where fish perch perkily on a bed of ice. There are barstools for informal eating or you can order from the crudo menu at your table. We skipped over this section as there were too many other dishes I wanted to try. Four options include gilt-head bream ceviche with green tomato and apple aguachile which I simply have to return for and is but one example of the creative juices flowing in the kitchen at OMA. There is also a seabass crudo, chalk stream trout tartare and yellowfin tuna with clementine ponzu and crispy garlic.
I struggled to choose just a couple of dishes from the small plates section where there are six dishes. Lobster bisque bõrek is a phrase that slips off the tongue with as much pleasure as the eating of it. It was deliciously decadent. A beautifully crispy pastry square was topped with baked cheese and dusted with rust-red smoked paprika and grated parmesan and gave way, once cut open, to a lobster bisque sauce. It tasted as rich as it sounds and I would have liked a bowl of sharp greens to order with it. The small plates section includes a Greek salata with carob rusks and galomizithra so perhaps this is the pairing I should have selected. Instead, I chose one of my favourite Greek dishes, mussel saganaki which was served on a bed of tsalafouti, a Yemeni flatbread which had soaked up the tomato-based sauce. The mussels were plump and voluptuous, lightly cooked and very fresh. Rarely have I so wanted the sea lapping at my toes.
By now I was thanking our server for advising restraint with the menu not only because portions are well sized for two people, but also due to the rich sauces that abound. Next up was a meaty dish which was probably my least favourite of a very good meal but I hasten to add that I am almost exclusively pescatarian so the smoked sausage and octopus skewer on a lamb sauce was too meaty for me. I eyed up the squid skewer with za’atar oil at the next table rather enviously and will order that on my return.
By this time I could not eat another bite but did want to try the desserts of which there are three. Risogelo rice pudding is served with blood orange and we eschewed this option for olive oil ice cream with fennel pollen and more olive oil. I’ve never been a fan of olive oil ice cream but this version at OMA has converted me. Not only was the gelato wonderfully creamy, but the fennel pollen provided a slightly gritty (in a good way) textural contrast.
The sticky phyllo skewer took me by surprise as it lay coiled, snake-like around its wooden perch. It was a sort of phyllo-brioche hybrid so it was more dense than I was expecting. Gladly the salted caramel sauce hit just the right sweet note and the quenelle of mascarpone and lemon zest ice cream was an excellent accompaniment.
We brought the meal to a close with a double espresso and a fresh mint tea, both served in brown, ceramic beakers. at this point, one could enjoy a tipple from a list of dessert wines – mostly Greek – and digestifs.
Both my plus one and I are alcohol-free at the moment but the substantial wine list was full of tempting bottles. Acba Derrington has collected some 450 wines which are conveniently collated in a user-friendly wine list. There are a number of wines by the glass – perfect for lunchtime drinking – and the rest of the list is divided into sections called ‘influence of the sea’, ‘surrounded by the sea’, and ‘further inland’. Each section – pink, orange, white and so on – is represented by a range of countries. If you need a hand then ask sommelier, Alessandara Tasca. I was tempted by the two non-alcoholic drinks – rhubarb and rosemary or cucumber and elderflower so those are choices for the next visit.
My advice to readers about OMA is to Book ASAP and to go very hungry. Preferably with a group of friends, so that you can order many more of the dishes that two people can conceivably eat. Then you have the pleasure of tasting a lot more of these creatively prepared plates which tend towards being rather rich (perhaps I am showing my age here). Our server did a great job of politely suggesting we order fewer dishes than originally intended. But even with a reduced number of plates, I was struggling by the end. I think that the way to approach OMA may be little and often. Two dips and breads, a small plate and a skewer or two will suffice. If you want the giouvetsi then go softly on the starters. I’m planning a return visit to taste the crudo menu and more small plates – it was a hard choice to pass over the spanakopita gratin with malawach. OMA is easy to access being à deux pas from the London Bridge underground or British Rail. OMA makes a perfect end to a spot of browsing or shopping in the market. A glass of wine, a dip or two and your outing will have reached a high point. But don’t leave it until you go shopping at the market, as OMA is a destination worth seeking out.
OMA is an appetising option for pescatarians and meat eaters alike. Vegetarians will not leave hungry either. The service is super friendly, and the servers are genuinely interested in one’s experience with the dishes. The food came out briskly but there was no sense of us being moved on. Nor was there an email informing me that I would have to vacate the table after two hours. Once the terrace opens this week, one will feel as if one is actually in the market as that is exactly the case, albeit one floor up. Agora, downstairs, could not have been more aptly named.
As we left OMA in mid-afternoon, the light glinted off The Shard nearby, London looking at its best. OMA takes its rightful place as the new kid on the block.
OMA 3 Bedale St, London, SE1 9AL, open 12 – 3pm and 5.30 – 11pm. Closed Mondays
Other restaurant news that has caught our eye this month:
all’onda is a new fine dining destination on Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia. A street with a number of excellent eateries already, this is one to put in the diary. It translates as ‘on the wave’ and all’onda refers to the technique involved in making risotto which, properly made, resembles small waves. Head Chef, Andrea Granzarolo, has developed a varied risotto menu including the traditional – primavera and risotto alla Milanese – all the way to pairing the Venetian squid ink risotto with ‘nduja. I love the sound of artichoke risotto with coffee, black lime and sweetbreads.
All’onda is at 67 Charlotte Street, London W1T 4PH
Julie’s is an iconic restaurant that first opened in 1969. It was a place where celebrities gathered – from Kate Moss and Johnny Depp to Yoko Ono, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger and Princess Diana. Launched by BIBA designer, Julie Hodgess it quickly became a favourite gathering place for celebrities, royalty, artists and bohemians. In the 1970s and 80s, it embodied the spirit of Notting Hill. Now under new owner and Holland Park resident, Tara MacBain, it has re-opened in its original location as a French brasserie. Chef Patron Owen Kenworthy (previously from Brawn and The Pelican) has curated an all-day à la carte Franglais menu – expect to see those fabulous shellfish towers.
Julie’s is at 135 Portland Road, London, W11 4LW
We are also still dreaming of last month’s pick – Josephine Bouchon and looking forward to trying El Cenote, a new Mexican margarita and taco bar, once it opens at the end of the month.
