We had not been in the pulsing gloom of Oma long when I caught sight of my neighbour’s napkin. Thoroughly swiped with the remnants of his wild red prawn giouvetsi, it looked like something grimly lowered into an evidence bag at a crime scene; a Rorschach test of scarlet blots and smears that had memorialised the messy, crustacea-squeezing work of a dish that is already internet famous. Later on in Agora, the conjoined sibling establishment that sits downstairs, members of the team carried a swaddled, whole pig carcass through thronging, dimly-lit crowds, like butchers stopping at a rave on the way to a delivery.
I’m not entirely sure why these are the most indelible images in my mind, following a couple of separate visits to restaurateur David Carter’s twin-pack of blockbusting Borough Market openings. But I think it might be because they exemplify the fact that these restaurants, and Oma in particular, draw their power from a kind of sophisticated primality. Though Oma presents as fancy, a sleek, griller’s Berghain of thudding house, seductive low-lighting and open kitchens with futuristic, check-on computer screens, it deals in rugged, head-down and elbows-out pleasures. At its best, it is both surprising and utterly scintillating.
In my view, Oma, the Greek word for “raw”, is the one to go for. Don’t get me wrong. Agora (which, fittingly, means “market”) on a Friday night is almost illegally fun; an irrepressible, clubby whirl of bubbled flatbreads, green chilli margaritas and the young and attractive spilling out from communal tables onto the street. It was just when I dug into the food offering — serviceable pork skewers, a spiced riff on a ham and pineapple pizza better in theory than execution — that things felt a little lacking and directionless.
Upstairs though, there are decidedly grown-up signifiers (chairs with backs; glistening raw bar; Atlas-thick, 450-bin list of coastal wines) and the intended vibe starts to properly cohere. The menu begins with breads and dips so spectacular they almost dare you to fill up on them. Laffa bread, grill-scorched and puffily aerated, had a soft, unfurling flavour complexity that was pure heaven dragged through the piquant contrasts of labneh dribbled in salt cod XO. Açma verde — imagine an Anatolian bagel and garlic bread had the world’s most irresistible baby — and smoky baba ghanoush flooded the same pleasure centres. Gilt-head bream ceviche, meanwhile, lounged in a shallow bath of puckering, punchy green tomato and apple aguachile.
If you are wondering where Chinese condiments and Mexican-origin crudos fit within a Mediterranean framework then the answer is they don’t. Oma’s executive chef Jorge Paredes hails from Ecuador; Carter is a Barbadian with a longstanding affection for Greek cuisine. So the aim is a sort of gently heretical capturing of culinary essence, rather than a forensic attempt to do it just like an Athenian yiayia might.
Does the fact they call their giant seafood vol-au-vent a “borek” feel like a diplomatic incident waiting to happen? Possibly. But it is hard to care when you are thrilling at a fairy’s hot tub of buttery puff pastry and a rich, gushing spill of sweet lobster bisque. Or following it up with springy, griddled coins of sucuk (the Balkan sausage) and octopus, threaded on a metal skewer and painted with a dark, glimmering lamb sauce. Things got oddly protracted towards the end. The last few dishes — decent grilled asparagus on a fragrant swamp of wild garlic sauce; an oxtail and bone marrow version of a giouvetsi (an orzo risotto) that had an oozy, deep savour but was so intense it almost felt like an endurance test — arrived with the sort of gaps that hamper an evening’s momentum.
Does the fact they call their seafood vol-au-vent a borek feel like a diplomatic incident waiting to happen?
But then a judiciously room temperature rice pudding, buoyantly creamy and mounded with stewed plums, hauled things back and then some. We finished, as you absolutely wouldn’t in an Ionian ouzeri, with excellent espresso martinis, before descending back through Agora’s clamourous scrum and out into the night.
Oma is slick, sceney and, at times, maybe a little cold and hard-edged. Yet, in the moments it finds its groove, the combination of ancient Greek simplicity and definably London gastronomic rule-breaking is nothing short of, well, epic.
