August 2022 - Food

The owners of this chic new Peckham vegan restaurant work very, very hard to shower their guests with culinary treats, serving up a keenly priced, 11-dish tasting menu with a slightly chaotic enthusiasm. The result is delightful and exhausting by turns.

Take Omni’s introductory olives, for example. Often, restaurant olives are a polite formality, designed to stop diners gnawing the tablecloth as they wait for something more substantial. But here, gigantic Cerignola olives came artfully smoked, offering the allure of breathing rich bonfire smoke into your lungs. They were followed by a deliciously silky butterbean purée, scented with saffron and topped with a lemony tangle of roasted fennel. The braised peach blue tacos were another highlight, offering a sweetly summery mouthful with an intriguing earthiness. And I was knocked out by the shitake mushroom skewers, which came charred and accompanied by a black-garlic, apple and elderflower sauce: not a flavour combo I ever thought I’d try, let alone chase around the plate with a rampaging fork.