Ombra, Hackney: This Italian restaurant finds culinary freedom in the set menu

In this siren-soundtracked corner of Hackney, Molly Codyre finds culinary ingenuity has flourished into one of the city’s best Italian restaurants

Tagliolini covered in a blanket of black truffle (Molly Codyre)

Hackney’s Ombra catapulted to gastronomical fame for a very amusing, and simulataneously unfortunate, reason. It should have been front and centre for its bloody good food. Instead, it was getting write-ups in The Sun after a disgruntled customer and food writer had been charged £1.50 for the parmesan that was grated atop their pasta. It is, I’m sorry to say, so funny. When I reviewed Mangal 2 I spoke about the host of regulars who were perturbed to discover they had to start paying for bread. Parmesan, especially that of the quality Ombra serves, falls under that category as far as I’m concerned. If you want it, pay for it, you cheapskate.

The whole thing was so ridiculous but it also overlooked a very important point: Ombra is consistently one of east London’s best restaurants, and definitely one of London’s best Italian restaurants. I could have written this review a hundred times over because I truly love Ombra. I think it is one of the city’s most underrated establishments, despite the fact it has a series of passionate regulars. In the name of journalistic integrity I went back with my critical cap on just to be sure, and I left thinking it was even better.

Ombra grew up a little bit over lockdown, finding its best self in what has been seen by many as a post-Covid necessity: the set menu. It has, of course, risen in popularity for economic reasons – both in terms of money and time – but it seems to have allowed Ombra to thrive. There’s endless ingenuity in this menu; culinary creativity that can be harder to achieve when you’re serving up multiple dishes at conflicting times and lobbying requests (like extra parmesan).

Carlingford oysters with a beetroot reduction and sorrel (Molly Codyre)

The offending cheese did crop up at times, most memorably as a fonduta with prosciutto and ricotta-filled ravioli, its deeply umami, salty notes adding an eye-popping moreishness. This was one of those dishes that was so deceptively simple, but that you think about for a long time afterwards; the al dente pasta, the salty bursts of little nuggets of prosciutto, the deceptively light ricotta and the fonduta. Phew. I’d like to see someone complaining about spending £1.50 on that. I’d drop a small fortune just to have a bottle to go.

Said ravioli arrived, however, after a series of small plates that seemed to come and go like a particularly delicious rotating act. Carlingford oysters were paired with a beetroot reduction and sorrel, the earthiness from the root vegetable perfectly offsetting the salinity of the molluscs. Cured sardine seemed to laugh in the face of those you get out of a tin – so tender, no shrapnel-like bones, with a concentrated fishiness that seemed to burst out at you with each bite, the hunk of olive oil-soaked focaccia underneath adding a humbling mellowness. Dry aged mackerel was equally as impressive, a black garlic sauce matching the power of the fish with braised escarole for crunch and a hint of bitterness. Gnocco fritto with wild boar mortadella almost doesn’t need me to try and summarise it in words because really, what can vocabulary say about a piece of golden, lightly fried oily dough topped with a peppery piece of mortadella that your taste buds won’t immediately know? I doubt anything that consists of the above could ever be bad, but Ombra seems to have perfected it, the dough offering a gratifying crunch before almost melting away.

The most interesting of the lot was the mussels, de-robed and floating around with an array of white beans and spiralised turnips in a sauce that I can only imagine involved a lot of butter. The whole thing was beige, there were battling textures and complimentary flavours – it was like earth and ocean, the nuttiness of the beans pairing ingeniously with the briny mussels. An extra course of tagliolini with trompette de la mort and black truffle was again heavy on the butter, but also quietly confident in its subtlety. The truffles aren’t thrown around here with reckless abandon; they don’t work their way in courtesy of a (in my opinion, redundant) oil. Instead, they are sourced from Kent and thinly shaved over the top of the pasta like a particularly pungent blanket.

Monkfish was striking orange in colour and the exact personification of the autumn trees outside (Molly Codyre)

Roasted monkfish reignited my love for the fish, its creamy flesh retaining a light sweetness courtesy of its goldilocks cooking time – not too long, not too little – and holding its own against the pumpkin puree and sea urchin sauce. The whole plate was a striking orange colour, the exact personification of the autumnal trees outside, and the flavours wonderfully encapsulated everything that is so great about this culinary season.

It should hopefully be strikingly clear by now that this was an overwhelmingly impressive meal. I have always been a fan of Ombra, but it seems to have really come into its own at the moment, perhaps finding its culinary freedom in the perceived rigidity of this set menu. In a restaurant of this size, cooking in this way allows Mitshel Ibrahim to fully flex his gastronomic muscles, and show off what is an enviable level of knowledge and technique. Even better, the restaurant has retained its endearing charm, as if it just found itself plonked on this siren-soundtracked, canal-bordered corner of Hackney.