Oma

This modern Greek restaurant was opened in April 2024 by David Carter, the site tucked away at the edge of Borough Market in a building that once housed a Hotel Chocolate shop. The head chef is Jorge Parades, who previously worked at Sabor. The menu is only vaguely Greek, with influences from other countries present. Oma is up a flight of stairs under a covered terrace, with a sister restaurant Agora at ground level, and a basement for an overflow area, a kitchen, bakery and the toilets. This is a big place, apparently serving around 180 covers for lunch and 250 to 300 customers at dinner. The small tables are quite tightly spaced, with low backed chairs that you tend to slide out of, set on a wooden floor with music playing in the background. Add in the noise of the trains passing from the nearby station and this is not a quiet environment. There is an open kitchen where you can see the charcoal grill and half a dozen chefs working at this lunch service. The menu was a la carte, and had was split into sections: breads, spreads, crudo, small and clay pot/grill.

The wine list had 349 labels and ranged in price from £33 to £480, with a median price of £79 and an average markup to retail price of 2.9 times. The list was 26% Greek, 22% Italian, 21% French and 19% Spanish, with a few wines from elsewhere, with five English wines. Sample references were Azevedo Vinho Verde 2023 at £39 for a bottle that you can find in the high street for £11, Ousyra Winery Serifiotiko 2022 at £62 compared to its retail price of £25, and Storm wines Ignis pinot noir 2021 at £98 for a wine that will set you back £38 in the high street. For those with the means there was Hatzidakis Assyrtiko de Louros Vignes Centenaires 2020 at £230 compared to its retail price of £160, and Roagna Barolo 2013 at £420 for a wine whose current market value is £221.

Laffa flatbread (£3.50) is popular around the Middle East, and a range of dips are sold here to accompany it. The bread was simple but fine, and we tried a couple of the dips. Ajvar (£6) is a Balkan condiment made from peppers, garlic and aubergine, in this case topped with hazelnuts. This was pleasant, not overly spicy but with a decent kick of garlic. Tarama (£6) dip (salted and cured fish roe mixed with olive oil and lemon juice) with a little pickled cucumber was also fine (13/20).

Tuna ceviche (£16) came with avocado and tamari, a sort of Japanese version of soy sauce made from fermented soy beans whose connection to the Mediterranean is rather hazy to me This fish itself was fine, of good quality, and avocado went well with it, while soy of course goes nicely with tuna. I have no idea why it is on this menu, but it was very pleasant (13/20).

Scallop with XO chilli butter was less good. The scallop was served in its shell and although it was diver caught it was not of especially high quality. It had a stringy character that was distracted from by the addition of XO chilli oil. Why chilli in a notionally Greek restaurant? I was less bothered about this than the texture of the scallop (12/20).

Spanakopita is usually a savoury snack made of filo pastry filled with spinach, feta and herbs. The version here was deconstructed so you had slabs of pastry and a dish of creamed spinach, allowing you to construct your own sandwich. This was pleasant enough but I would rather have just had a classic version. There was nothing obvious to be added by having the diner build their own snack (12/20).

Whole John Dory with XO chilli butter (a popular item on the menu here) had a whole fish served at the table, with the diner left to do the filleting. I like John Dory and this was nicely cooked. This was a good quality fish and didn’t need the superfluous chill. As my dining companion, who had lived in Greece for many years, pointed out, this was not something that you would see in a truly Greek dish (14/20).

Potatoes from Flourish Farm in Cambridge were decent (12/20). However, the hispi cabbage tasted, not to put too fine a point on it, burnt. Having managed to let it catch on the grill and bits of it become charred, the kitchen apparently added some charcoal oil, which was an utterly daft idea (9/20). To be fair, they took this off the bill without fuss. I’m not sure who decided this was fine to serve, but if you made something like this at home you would just bin it after the first taste.

Desserts were not obviously particularly Greek, such as mascarpone zabaglione. Indeed, in some cases they were not obviously dessert at all: apricot and rosemary salad with watermelon sorbet? Some had modern chef touches: olive oil ice cream, that sort of thing. I really just fancied some baklava, or something without shrubbery in it. Nothing was going to rescue this meal anyway, so we skipped dessert.

The coffee supplier was Catalyst Coffee in Chancery Lane, and the coffee was quite good, devoid of bitterness and with decent acidity. My dining companion remarked that it was the best element of the meal. Service was fine, with a busy but friendly waiter. The bill, with just water to drink, came to £71 per person. If you shared a modest bottle of wine and had dessert, then a typical cost per person might be more like £105. I found the food here to range between acceptable and disappointing, and that can never be a good thing. However, they have clearly found their audience, as the place is booming. I am not quite sure why.