It’s the talk of the neighbourhood – sushi in the North Strand. Forget cappuccino bars, sushi is the new sign of poshification. “Now what’s that gonna do to residential property tax valuations?” one friend asks. Another has met all kinds of interesting folk sitting on the small chairs waiting for their orders to emerge from behind the neat curtain with an owl printed on it.
Okayu is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it small white shop on Dublin’s North Strand Road across from the fire station. It is a neat white place when you step inside. Small hand-made silk things are suspended from string with wooden clothes pegs and a spray of origami flowers tumbles down from the ceiling.
There is a small counter where you could conceivably stay and eat your bento box, but I’m a friend who lives nearby so we’ll be bringing it home to hers.
They have printed takeaway menus but the choices are also hand-painted onto white paper that hangs in long lists from the counter. Most eye-catching is the okonomiyaki, which sounds like a summation of the Irish economic situation, but is actually a kind of Japanese pizza. There are 33 types of sushi and sashimi. Two pieces of nigiri sushi (the typical rectangular wedge of rice with a topping) cost between €2.10 and €3.20, so they’re a little over a euro a pop. There are bento boxes and even a couple of teriyaki burgers.
There’s a whole other section of cooked food on the back of the menu, but we’re here for the raw fish and that Japanese pizza. A trip to the cash machine (as the card machine is still on its way) means we miss out on the green tea you can sip while waiting.
Then it’s home to a candle-lit table, warmed plates and a third diner to help us get through our haul.
First the soup. I have no great expectations of miso soup. It’s something I feel I should like as it’s healthy but I’ve never slurped one I’ve loved. Until now. Okayu’s miso is a light golden honey colour and has the gentle yeasty warmth of miso without the sludgy aftertaste. There are rings of crisp raw spring onion floating like tiny texture and flavour lifebuoys. It’s miso soup for the soul.
The okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza) appears to have a living topping when we open the lid. “It’s moving,” I announce – but it’s just the bonito flakes waving in the warm draft from the candle. These parings of dried tuna are like the aftermath of a chemical peel; skin coloured and textured and feathery enough to come alive in the lightest of breezes.
They top a warm round pie of egg, bacon and ginger. Thin lattice lines of mayonnaise are squirted underneath the bonito flakes and there’s another sauce that has pickled, sweet-sour notes. It’s a one-dish campaign against the image of Japanese food as a healthy and life-prolonging diet. Japanese pizza is a riotous taste-fest without being greasy or leaden.
A salmon sashimi box has several clean wedges of raw salmon, a first for one of the people around the table (he likes it). There are two giveaway signs when your raw salmon is not at peak condition. The first is a slimy texture, the second a fishy pong. This fish has neither. Its seams of fat are thin and it smells sweet rather than fishy.
Underneath, there's a leaf that we almost don't eat. Bento boxes have been known to come with plastic greenery just for show. Not eating it would have meant missing out on a delightful nettle-mint flavour like nothing I've ever tasted. A quick forage in the undergrowth of Google images later indicates it was a shiso leaf, from the perilla plant which is a member of the mint family.
The box also has two crisp-bottomed pork gyozas and crab and avocado rice rolls dusted in orange roe. There’s plenty of sweet pink pickled ginger, my very favourite bit of the sushi experience.
The sushi itself is as intricate as those origami decorations. Omelette sushi has thin-fried egg layered and folded onto itself like millefeuille and then garnished with a few rice grains. Sweet, golden-fried thin tofu has been turned into a pillow case for fluffy innards of rice. Brown gourd strips pickled and strapped to the rice with a seaweed safety belt are like sweet, firm onions crossed with cabbage stalks. There's properly ripe softly disintegrating avocado, not the tooth-squeaky depressing wedges of rubber you can get.
A dessert of green tea ice-cream looks lovely but tastes of nothing more than vanilla. The green tea tiramisu is a little more impressive: coffee-soaked lady fingers smothered in a blanket of minty green mousse.
Is Okayu authentic Japanese food? Possibly. Most definitely it's great food, sourced, crafted and presented in a way that puts Okayu in a different stratosphere to your average takeaway.
Dinner for three, with dessert, came to €44
