» Banyan to rights
Andrew Kay gets a new taste experience at Okini in Brighton
If, like me, you are of an age where nouvelle cuisine is a horrid and hungry blot on your culinary memory you will probably have an aversion to overly fiddled-with dolly portions of food. OK, they may be prime and expensive ingredients and, yes, it does look lovely, but half an hour later you don’t half need another one.
I spent a few years lunching in smart restaurants and then calling in for a sandwich on the way back to the office. It was a clever movement, and let’s face facts, a good way for businesses to increase margins. The clever ones, of course, would not only have served Lilliputian food to diners but also bought a sandwich shop close by to mop up that profit. I do like my food to look nice on the plate though, and I had a good idea that Okini was going to do that. What I had not expected was the vast palette of colours, flavours and textures that they would employ, nor was I expecting to be quite so full.
We started with two favourite dishes. Mr C chose salt-and-pepper squid which came in a cornet of woven banyan leaf (more of them later). The squid was piping hot and the dry dressing a zingy blend of salt and chilli. I had the same dish on the same site in a previous restaurant years ago, with the much-missed Pete McCarthy, but this was better – in taste and presentation.
“I’m not really a lobster fan but I would certainly order this dish again”
My soft-shell crab was fabulous, big and crispy, full of soft and funky flesh that tasted of the sea, of real crab and not the sweet blandness of white crab meat. Alongside came a timbale of crab tartare. God it was good, so good that I ate it very slowly indeed. The spicing was expertly handled. Our generous host also furnished us with a plate of marvellous scallops on a lime-leaf-infused mash with confit mushrooms and blue potato chips. Another big wow – loads of effort but worthwhile given the succulent quality of the shellfish involved. I could have left happy at that point but there was more, so much more.
In true banquet style our next course arrived, a lobster, Golden Sands lobster to be precise. It too was a picture, a slightly surreal one. The flesh had been removed, crumbed, fried and dusted with spices. A pillar of crisp white noodles stood to the side ready to be dipped into a sweet-sour sauce. Methi leaves had also been deep-fried and sprinkled
about. It was pretty amazing stuff. I’m not really a lobster fan but I
would certainly order this dish again.
On then to a tiny sorbet of tropical fruits, nice, if perhaps a bit too sweet to cleanse, but certainly refreshing.
Unlike your average oriental food, dishes here are perhaps not designed for sharing so we chose carefully. Mr C opted for belly pork which arrived in a thick disc, cooked long and slow until it surrendered to the merest wave of a fork. I chose a dish of monkfish in a galangal flower sauce served in a yam basket with a bean curd sail. The fish was great, and there was more than enough of it, but the sauce was epic, a vibrant yellow in colour, rich and creamy but with a taste sensation I was virgin to. Galangal flowers, it turns out, are so delicate that our host’s grandmother crops, dries and sends them to him from Malaysia. I want some, and despite almost bursting from eating, I could not stop eating this deliciously strange dish.
Our host joined us for a plate of braised brisket, a favourite Chinese dish of mine but here executed with the same panache and wit. I tasted it and it was better than good, it too was great. On the side, as if we needed them, we had great noodles, intensely herb-flavoured rice and fried bak choi, all first class.
I never get to puds in oriental restaurants because they tend to disappoint, a factor that our host is well aware of, which is why the offerings tend to be Eastern takes on Western classics. Mr C had a coconut crème brûlée that really did make sense. I had a banyan iced parfait. Now banyan leaves are long, dark green and could not look less edible. They do, however, impart an addictively odd flavour – grassy, herbal, tea-like? I’m not sure, just rather good. Both puddings also had very well executed biscuits, both different, a sign of real skills in this kitchen. Coffee was good and the whole experience left us inspired and happy. It’s rather nice to see an oriental kitchen fighting back at the vagaries of Pacific rim cooking, with a Western slant on the traditional flavours of the Far East. I loved the style of the place. The room is amazing with a wall of bright red glass that stretches far into the distance. The wine list, too, is first class with sensible house wines as well as some great top-end choices.
It may sound like an expensive night out, and given how much we ate I would be the first to admit that it was. But we did get the royal treatment. We could have eaten less and been very happy, and there are a great set menu offers that do not read like poor people’s choices. We will certainly be back with friends very soon.
Okini Pan-Asian Restaurant, 70 East Street, Brighton. Call 01273 779933 or see www.okini-restaurant.co.uk
