Oma review: Greek-island fare pulled off with aplomb

Hot on the heels of Camille and Kolae in Borough Market comes this new island-inspired Greek from David Carter, a former Gordon Ramsay front-of-house who already has American barbecue joint Smokestak and nose-to-tail Italian restaurant Manteca, both in Shoreditch, to his name. With downstairs wine bar Agora topped by first-floor dining room Oma, this is Carter’s most ambitious project yet – and he’s pulled it off with aplomb.

The mood: It’s all Greek

A flight of white stone stairs leads to a dining room under the green girders of the market roof. A terrace spreads out to the left while on the right is a 2.5m-long raw bar and hearth, where dry-aged meat, Cornish fish and Flourish Farm veg are cooked over an open wood fire. Smokestak and Manteca designers Box 9 have created an interior as weathered as the most sun-kissed, wind-swept Greek isle, with a colour scheme of eucalyptus and stone applied to natural materials. At lunch the space is flooded with daylight; in the evening, low lighting and thudding beats create a mesmeric scene.

The food: That of the gods

Greek food is having a moment in London – Kima, Vori, Gaia – but no one has applied the same creativity to the cuisine as Barbados-born Carter and his Ecuadorian head chef Jorge Paredes. The wood-fired breads, baked downstairs, are worth the cost of entry alone – pillowy laffa, or açma verde like a cross between a bagel and garlic bread – and dredged through labneh topped with salt cod XO sauce or smoky baba ghanoush with a rubble of Jerusalem artichoke. Elsewhere are sausage and octopus glued together on a skewer with sticky lamb sauce like succulent surf ’n’ turf. Not everything is so rich – Oma is the Greek word for raw and there’s gilthead bream ceviche and sea bass crudo made from fish picked off the glittering ice.

Oma is located at 2-4 Bedale St, London

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