OKA

OKA is a thoroughly north London pan-Asian restaurant, awash with pared back rustic touches and chic minimalism along Regents Park Road. This tiny restaurant offers a little insight in to how eating out works in big Asian cities. Sure, London’s pretty busy, but it’s got nothing on Tokyo, for example. OKA is a tiny, hole in the wall joint, and as such, reservations are limited to 90 minutes for two diners and 120 minutes for groups of four. Don’t let that deter you, this is how it's done in Asia. The restaurant is a textbook example of how an understated dining room can be the most effective backdrop for truly colourful food. At OKA, that food is a riot of colour, courtesy of their generous pan-Asian menu with a firm skew towards sushi. For those local to Primrose Hill, this won’t be news, as the restaurant has already established itself as the home of a properly comprehensive Asian menu in this part of Camden.

There should be no confusion about the idea of pan-Asian, however. OKA is a affirmably a pan-Asian restaurant and not a fusion restaurant. The kitchen team draw on cuisines from across the Asian continent and produce dishes which honour the way they are enjoyed in their native home – there’s no mash up of sushi and curry here. Expect to find a sushi menu that offers old favourites like salmon and avocado nigiri and unagi rolls, as well as interesting takes of Korean dishes like bulgogi beef and Indian-inspired chilli sambal chicken. Regents Road on Primrose Hill is an unlikely home for a restaurant of OKA’s calibre, but that hasn’t deterred their fans.