A tasty treat that could easily be missed

Post-pandemic dining in Leeds city centre has had another boost recently with the addition of Japanese and Korean kitchen and bar, Oba.

Now I’m partial to some world food at lunchtime, whether it’s Leeds’s best burrito from The Mexican Pilgrim (you can normally find the food truck around the city at places including Central Square) or perhaps a bowl full of ramen from House of Fu. So, with the opening of this new eatery I took the opportunity to head to the Merrion Centre to sample its menu.

The restaurant which is located at the Merrion Centre on Wade Lane is a hidden gem that you might walk past and think nothing of it but on entering you’ll have a warm welcome and located so close to the Arena I’d expect this place to be the perfect pre-show eatery.

For this review I took some friends along, with one noting sitting down for lunch together felt like a real shift back to well “normality”.

Chicken gyoza

My hope was that having friends to share the experience with me would give me an opportunity to see more than my own dishes…however this backfired. We all opted for the lunchtime menu which priced at £12 offers fantastic value with a range of starters and main courses included and perhaps most disappointingly from a reviewers perspective we all opted for the Gyoza.

But that is where the disappointment ended. The Gyoza were delicious, in fact if someone had just handed me a large bowl full of them I think I’d have been a happy man and the silence while we ate tells me that my compatriots agreed.

Chicken Bibimbap

Onto the main course, I opted for Chicken Bibimbap, a Korean rice stone bowl featuring minced chicken, a selection of vegetables, egg and Korean sweet chilli miso and finished off with some chilli sauce. Not only did the dish look amazing – it was almost crying out for an instagram post – but it tasted amazing and offered the right amount of food at lunchtime which meant I wasn’t left feeling sleepy in the afternoon.

As for my friends, one selected the chicken katsu curry, an option I always have to tear myself away from when it’s on a menu. As for the third in our trio, she selected ginger pork belly which came sliced with a ginger sauce, onion and sesame. Both dishes were served with rice and although I personally can’t comment on the flavour but the presentation was looked good and the feedback was unanimously positive.

What’s more the service during our visit was brilliant, not only were they accommodating in turning down the music a little as we’d managed to pick the table under the speaker but one of my friends didn’t have long due to needing to get back to the office for a meeting. Having told the team, they made sure the food came out quickly, a real bonus when looking for a tasty and laid back lunchtime meeting venue.

I’m certainly looking forward to going back to Oba and sampling some of its other dishes, whether that’s the sushi classic Nobu style black cod miso or perhaps even the Unagi Donburi which is fresh eel with Japanese eel sauce, schimi powder and rice. Ok maybe I’m not sure about the eel but you don’t know if you don’t try!

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