Oaka at The Mansion House (Restaurant)

Best for: sampling ales, quirky water features, and snooping on the chefs via video link.

Great: beef marinated in palm sugar, range of beers and wines, and squishy fragrant scallops.

Beer. It’s what men and women up and down the country reach for: in pubs, with a curry, on holiday, after work, at a bbq; you can even sit on a giant bike with your mates and drink from kegs as you cycle around London.

For me, though, beer is a four-letter word that I’m not overly enamoured with (give me W-I-N-E any day of the week). Somehow the ladette culture of boozing on pints passed me by, and I find the smell – and taste – of beer rather unpleasant.

In my world, ‘gin and tonic’ tumbles from my mouth like some sort of automatic alcoholic reflex as soon as I walk into a bar. When it’s a restaurant it’s ‘can I see the wine list please’ quicker than the waiter can whip out his notepad and pen.

Unfortunate for pan-Asian restaurant, Oaka at The Mansion House, then that I rocked up to try its, er, beer selection and food marinated in, er, beer.

Doubly unfortunate that the Kennington establishment serves Asian food because I brought along my boyfriend who had just got back from a trip to Indonesia and was tired of rice and noodles.

Fortunately, however, we got off to a good start.

The restaurant was beautiful, and a real treat to find on the desolate and dreary Kennington Park Road. Essentially it’s one of those pubs with a Thai restaurant attached that seems to grace every UK town, only with one difference: this is no traditional old pub complete with beery fart smell, this is a venue that’s half sleek modern bar (friendly enough to have regulars) and half Thai restaurant with lots of shiny dark wood and red tealight holders.

There are a few quirky touches too: five big silver taps run water above (hard to describe, but, basically, a cool water feature); and a plasma screen shows live coverage of the action in the kitchen (I counted six pans on the hob at one point, manned by just one chef, plus plenty of ladling, stirring and wiping down counters).

To begin our meal we were given five beers from Oakham Ales brewery in Peterborough to sample. I diligently sipped them all, wrote down my thoughts – ‘hoppy’, ‘hoppy’, ‘beery’, ‘slightly fruity’, and ‘hoppy’ - and then politely pushed them over to my boyfriend to finish.

Luckily, he has a much better taste for beer and correctly identified lots of the different notes such as grapefruit and lychee. The JHB and Citra were his favourites.

The food quickly followed, and oh, the food. The curried pumpkin gyoza was buttery and mellow; the steamed dragon scallops with ginger and coriander were squishy, and fragrant; and the beef marinated in palm sugar was heavenly with a rich, toffee flavour.

We were given a huge sampling portion of different starters (called ‘gap glam’ on the menu) and finished every one. I would have licked the plate clean given the chance.

The mains were also successful – a creamy, nutty lamb massaman curry and a sweet, tender Japanese Chinese hot pot – but my advice would be to pig out on the gap glam as they were that bit more innovative and delicious.

Although many of the dishes had been cooked using beer, I couldn’t taste it, so presumably it enhanced the food and was a good pairing to the Asian spices and meaty dishes (such as the ribs).

Having undeniably enjoyed our meal up to this point, my boyfriend and I then entered ‘greedy mode’ and ordered dessert. Just one, to share: ice-cream in tempura (who could resist?). It was a mistake.

I almost wept as I ate it, because Oaka had been so good in all other ways. I wish I had watched the chefs make the pud on the TV as I’m pretty sure I would have seen them cut a slice of Vienetta, wrap it in raw pastry and drop it in a deep fryer. I’ve no objection to Vienetta, but it wasn’t quite what we were expecting, and most of the supposed tempura just tasted of raw pastry.

So please, if you find yourself in Kennington, make a beeline for Oaka restaurant for its friendly service, cool venue and downright delicious savoury food, but do not order dessert, and do not go in thinking you may be converted to the ways of beer because you won’t. They have a terrific international wine menu for you to work your way through instead....read more