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Leeds Live
Leeds Live
National
Jasmine Norden

Oba Kitchen review: The Leeds restaurant serving up mouthwatering Korean dishes

Korean and Japanese fusion restaurant Oba Kitchen opened its doors in Leeds back in September, offering a range of dishes for both vegans and meat-eaters.

The new restaurant and bar can be found in the Merrion Centre, where it promises a 'Korean cuisine concept' with a Japanese twist that sees the menu range from sushi to Bibimbap.

Reviews have been good so far, so I headed down to try Oba Kitchen for LeedsLive.

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The restaurant has a sleek, modern feel, with high ceilings and big windows that look out onto Wade Lane.

It's not a huge space, but seemed popular even on a cold Wednesday night - every table was occupied, leaving the atmosphere calmly buzzing.

We were seated quickly, and one of the waitresses came over within minutes to take our order.

To start, we decided to take full advantage of Oba Kitchen's fusion offering, and ordered a mixture of Korean and Japanese specialities.

The interior of Oba Kitchen (LeedsLive)

There's a board up listing the daily specials, so we chose one starter off there - the Kimchi pork gyozas. We shared those, along with Kang Poong Gi (Korean Fried Chicken), Kimchi spring rolls and soft shell crab sushi rolls.

To drink, Oba offers a range of brightly coloured sweet and sour cocktails as well as the usual wines and beers - I tried the Green Apple Sour cocktail and my friend the Raspberry Coulie.

These all arrived pretty quickly and we got tucked in immediately.

I don't think I'd tried Kimchi before and I have been immediately thoroughly converted - the spring rolls and pork gyozas were wonderfully spicy and crisp, and remained my favourite part of the meal. I'd highly recommend both of these if you head over to Oba.

The Korean fried chicken was covered in a lovely sweet chilli sauce - the perfect counter to its spicy kick.

Our brightly-coloured cocktails (LeedsLive)

While the soft shell crab in the sushi was admittedly, excellent (and arrived with a whole little crab in the top roll), the sushi was the least impressive of the starters for me. It was lovely, but less exciting than the spicy dishes we'd had before it.

The cocktails were brightly coloured in green and pink. Mine was exactly as sour as you'd expect a drink called green apple Sour to taste, and my friend's was very sweet.

I'm glad we tried them, and if you like a fruity cocktail you might love these - but we switched to wine for the rest of the meal.

Our sushi - with a whole soft shell crab rising out the top (LeedsLive)

Once we'd finished the starters we were already thinking that there may be some possibility we'd over ordered, but nevertheless, we were excited for the mains.

My friend ordered the Chicken Bibimbap, which is a Korean rice bowl with minced chicken, vegetables, sweet chilli miso and an egg.

I asked a waitress what she'd recommend, and she first asked me if I liked spicy food.

I said I was - and she told me she was a big fan of several of the Korean specialities.

We had mochi for dessert - a great palette cleanser (LeedsLive)

Eventually, I followed one of her recommendations and went for Korean stir fried assorted sea food with spicy sauce and rice.

And it was lovely - full of great spicy flavours with well-cooked prawns, squid and lots of veg.

But for me, the real star of the mains was the Chicken Bibimbap, which a waiter came over to personally hand mix for my friend.

The spicy, sesame oil flavour of this was wonderful - and the egg and sweet chilli miso worked perfectly together. As a bonus, it's served in a lovely stone bowl on its own wooden stand.

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We were already very full - but ended up sharing Mochi for dessert, which are Japanese rice cakes full of ice cream. We tried a pistachio and a mango one, and they're a fantastic palette cleanser.

By the time we'd got through all that, we were nearly the last people there.

But all in all, I'd highly recommend Oba Kitchen - I loved the spicy Korean dishes particularly and there's also lots of veggie and vegan options for people who don't eat meat.

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