Review: Ogino, Beverley

When we reported back to friends about our meal at Ogino, a Japanese restaurant in Beverley, they reflected that after a few grim experiences they have basically given up on trying Japanese restaurants outside of major cities. And I must admit I can also think of three really poor examples without much effort. Four, now.

So yeah. Beverley is a really handsome old market town in East Yorkshire and I’d recommend a wander round its old centre to anyone. I couldn’t recommend Ogino though. In spite of the snazzy ceiling decoration.

We started with one of their speciality sushi rolls. This was a thug of a roll, each slice way too large to eat in a mouthful. Stuffed with blue crab, salmon and tuna with tempura crumb sprinkled on top it would have been a nice combo if not so overwhelming. Perfectly nice sushi rice, just too much of it.

My main course was smoked duck with a red wine and paprika sauce. Putting a glass cover on a roast duck breast and squirting some smoke underneath before service doesn’t make it a smoked duck breast, and sure enough once the smoke had blown away there wasn’t any flavour left. The sauce was a vaguely sweet brown goo. The duck was okay but hardly melt-in-the-mouth. It had a slightly odd taste that I would have associated with boiled meat if it hadn’t clearly still been pink. Too long on a warming plate? Dunno.

Funnily enough, Maureen’s seared tuna had the same sort of taste. And a very odd texture, sort of like spam. It also had almost zero actual searing on the surface, just a grey outside and pinkish middle. The tuna was served on a bed of noodles with a bit of soy sauce; I guess this was the “soy and red shiso reduction”?

By far the best dish on the table was the accompaniment of kimchi fried rice. But you know, I defy anyone to f*ck up kimchi fried rice! So that’s not saying a lot. At £35 each for two courses before drinks, Ogino needed to be a whole lot better. Their ambition is waaaay beyond their actual ability.