Oh My G-Osh! New Knightsbridge Restaurant Misses The Mark
London is rammed with restaurants, everybody knows there are so many to choose from you could eat in a different one every night of the year and still have barely scratched the surface. And yet somehow enterprising foodies still keep coming up with brand spanking new ideas for eateries that, let’s face it, leave you with pretty much no idea what to expect until it arrives on your plate.
Osh is a bit like that. It describes itself as ‘a gastronomic intersection’ between food from Uzbekistan and various other countries across Asia. That covers thousands and thousands of miles, so I was intrigued and then baffled when I read the menu. There were some sushi and tempura dishes there, a tagine or two and an eclectic array of dim sum sounding things. But I’ve tried that sort of stuff before so asked for some help choosing traditional Uzbekistani dishes from a somewhat confusing (and enormous!) selection. The waitress raved enthusiastically about the bread basket from the in-house clay oven. Tempting, yes, but didn’t strike me as anything particularly out of the ordinary.
She didn’t appear to know anything about the traditional Uzbek osh – a slow cooked lamb and rice dish which the restaurant itself was named after.
A couple of cocktails bought us time to decipher the sea of choices further, and very fine drinks they were too. We tried the Streets of Osh, which was gin with a French liqueur called Suze, lemongrass, kefir lime and ginger. The Herbalist was excellent too, blending rum with pomegranate, mint and marjoram.
Drinks done, we selected Tiger Prawns and Tuna Tartare from the ‘small bites’ before diving in to the unknown with Surmi Roll, a concoction of rabbit and truffles, and Lagman soup which was a rather thin lamb noodle broth. Everything sounded exotic but in reality was simply warm and hearty. The flavours were fresh but the spices were a little too subtle for our tastes.
There was such a long wait for our deserts that the entire restaurant emptied around us and even the chefs in the open plan kitchen appeared to have packed up and disappeared for the night, but when they finally arrived they were the absolute highlight of the meal.
We scraped at the Matcha Green Tea Fondant and Pistachio Éclair until our spoons clashed.
It’s not cheap (Grapes are on the list for £4.50) but the location is superb, if you should find yourself lugging lots of heavy shopping bags from Harrods or Harvey Nicks, and there are some pretty delicious surprises to be had if you look hard enough.
