Alexis Tran
Google
The phở beef tartar is something you must experience at least once if you come to OKRA. As the name suggests, it’s beef tartar, accompanied by (what I’d assume) disks of cassava chips as a transporting vessel. The chip was crisp, neutral in profile to counter the flavour chorus that is the tartar itself. The spice blend gives you the experience of phở without eating the real thing. Cinnamon, star anise, a slight prickle from the cardamom, mellowed out by the creamy, full-bodied beef (can I say that beef is full bodied? Or is that a wine-only term? Eh whatever). Instead of painting a picture, it sings for you the abstract experience of what phở is, a surprisingly faithful rendition of a pillar in Vietnamese Cuisine. All in all, it was some damn good beef tartar (I haven’t had that many beef tartar though, so take this with a grain of salt).
For the final round, we got the octopus. Honestly? I liked it. Last time around, the grilled octopus was paired with an apple concentrate/jelly type thing and some other sauce (it was a long time ago, my memory is not that good) that got me super excited as it strikes a perfect balance between all flavour dimensions. This time around? Less so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fantastic dish and would certainly please the taste buds of many (cmon, how can you hate slightly smoky, brushed with char, perfectly grilled octopus), but it still was not memorable enough. Maybe it’s a me issue? The Michelin label kind of just put me in a mindset of “I need to be wowed”, so perhaps I set my expectation tooooooo high.
Honorable mentions: try the home-made ginger ale. If you are a ginger hater, it might just convert you.
TL;DR:
All in all, a 7.8/10 (yes I give very specific ratings, the numbers speak to me in strange ways)