Onaka Restaurant & Wine Bar

I’ve been to Onaka during the first week of opening a few years ago and the food was good and service was better.
I went there for lunch, and I’ve always liked the concept. However, the reality falls short.
The I had a shrimp salad and Tabouleh main dish.
The Shrimp salad was heavy and drowning in Mayo and lime and something that had a slight mango flavour, and when I told the staff I can’t consume dairy, and ordered that dish, he didn’t mention anything about having mayo… and neither did the menu description.
It only had 3 shrimp, and felt cheap looking at how much the meal cost: $ 35.
The Tabouleh was better. Good on flavour and heavy on texture.
The service staff were ok, but nothing special, considering how special their food is. or supposed to be.
As someone who cooks a lot and has a prettty restrictive diet, and loves places like Onaka, I’d only return if desperate.

GLUTEN FREE OPTIONS!
The bun on my sandwich was so amazingly phenomenal, after the first bite, I had to call staff over to confirm that what I had was actually gluten free. I would buy the buns to use at home if they sold them separately! There is also a daily selection for a gluten free dessert.
That being said, this really is a niche venue. The food is good, but pricey, which for quality food isn’t unreasonable, but I couldn’t eat here every day. My family has difficulty finding things here they would like, which means I eat here less often even though they have gluten free items on the menu and I don’t have to fret about the ill effects of inadvertently being served conventional gravy on everything. It is a nice treat once in a while to be able to come out and have a truly gluten free dessert that isn’t overpriced ice cream.

Tucked away in an otherwise generic mall location, this was a wonderful surprise after a visit to Gilman Barracks – an oasis of healthy, delicious and affordable food, served by friendly staff in a calm, comfortable and tastefully decorated dining room. They have a great lunch time multi-​course deal.

This restaurant was a huge, huge positive surprise for me.
My parents were invited to a tasting when Onaka first opened and they told me to check out the restaurant because it was right up my alley. Up my alley because most days of the weak I am a pretty clean, local food eater — eggs, fruit and organic quinoa for breakfast, brown rice, grilled proteins and vegetables for dinner — and this restaurant was all about conscious eating. My dad said, «they have some watermelon sashimi thing. Very nice but unusual».
I forgot about Onaka until this weekend when, after climbing Mt Faber twice with a ~15kg backpack, I need some brunch to refuel.
Between the better half and me, we ordered a pumpkin «kaya» toast set, lamb murtabak and pumpkin pancakes. Everything was amazing. The toast set came with a bowl of rich, roasted pumpkin jam, two thick slices of wholegrain bread (it was so fresh that I could taste the grainson the first bite) and 2 sous vide eggs in dashi broth. Now I don’t care if my eggs are cooked in a volcano or if the jam is made from gold, the bottom line is that the re-​interpretation of kaya toast with soft boiled eggs has to be better than the original if not why pay $ 10 right? It was delicious. I mean we ordered 4 additional slices of bread to mop up the «kaya». The lamb murtabak was a little pricey at $ 20 but oh boy, it was juicy, well seasoned and the phylo pastry shell was crisp. At this point, the dude and I were sort of fork fighting over these two dishes and then… the pancakes showed up.
Fluffy, thick pancakes with mashed pumpkin, a dollop of whipped cream on top and maple syrup on the side (I asked for that because I like my pancakes wet). Food For Thought finally has a worthy competitor. There was a little initial taste of sesame oil when I ate the pancakes, not sure if that’s due to the oil they use, but damn other than that I was in the bliss zone.
Yes people, I am swooning over a brunch meal. I am celebrating the end of my bad brunch karma.
So why didn’t I give them a fiver? This is weird but I think the wait staff let down the restaurant. When you have a business selling healthy food, I feel like it’s important that the waiters ‘sell’ the food and lifestyle in order to convince a crowd unfamiliar with conscious eating. I had the feeling the waiters hadn’t tried the food themselves and didn’t even get the philosophy of the restaurant, which if they did, they’d be waxing lyrical about the menu, which for all I care, tastes great and is healthy as an added bonus. The service wasn’t bad per se, but I think it makes a difference to why Onaka isn’t well known or packed to the gills. Secondly, I haven’t tried the lunch or dinner menu’s so I can’t affirm that last star. Otherwise, Onaka has everything going for it and I am perplexed as to why this place isn’t more crowded than half the overhyped places I’ve been to.

Dinner on Friday night was surprisingly quiet! Lovely servers, fairly attentive. Had a cute little cup of warm water brought out for me.
Wasn’t super hungry (unfortunately) so we shared the following:
1. Spiced pear drink (pear, cinnamon, ginger, calamansi) — $ 7 — a bit on the sweet side, nice touch of cinnamon though!
2. Stuffed tofu (steamed tofu with brown rice and mushroom stuffing, edamame and
shimeiji stir-​fry, tamari and sesame dressing) — $ 8 — I really liked the stuffing, actually! the tofu was the firm sort. liked the edamame too, i always like beans with a gd ‘crunch’ of sorts :) and yummy mushrooms
3. Duck pancake (tumeric crepes, duck confit, five spice, orange caramel) — $ 24 — as some other food blog has described. QUITE huge pieces (6 of them too), and a lot of duck inside. pretty filling! I found the orange caramel sauce to be a little too sweet, a bit cloying/​jam-​like. Crepes were delicious though! And sauce was certainly needed given the amt of duck. haha.
4. Banana pastillas (phyllo pastry, cinnamon roasted bananas, berries, maple syrup, walnuts, banana and cardamom ice cream) — $ 10 — I was somewhat full, but felt that it would be a pity to leave without having sampled their dessert! This was pretty delicious :) Roasting bananas brings out their natural sweetness, and the contrast of warm caramelized banana in the phyllo pastry with colder caramelized banana scattered was lovely. The phyllo pastry was a little tough though, not crisp enough. It was rather a struggle to cut it with a knife, biting was a little more productive but still met with some resistance. Anyway, sweetness of bananas was balanced out well by the tang of the slightly sour berries and crunch of walnuts. Ice cream was yummy, but cardamom flavour was probably overpowered by the banana flavour. Still, fairly gd dessert!
Satisfying meal! Next time. I want to try fish :) and maybe mushroom tea, and some of the other things that our friendly server recommended:
appetizers — asian hummus/​forked mash avocado
veges — stir fry asian greens
sandwiches
hot and sour prawn rice noodles (sounds tom yum-​ish)
sea bass (man! i want to try!)
chicken curry

Our appetizer was the Asian Hummus — a blend of organic chickpeas, tahini, topped with chilli-​marinated olives. The dip which was fortunately served at room temperature and thus had a good creamy texture. But it would have be a delightful dish if the whole meal pitas weren’t as hard as crab shells.
would you be surprised if the Chilli Crab Cakes come in three big fat lemongrass skewers? The chilli sauce version is thicker, sweeter and not as spicy as compared to the zichar style. The texture is similar to Thai fish cakes that are not deep fried. The Organic Rice cubes drowned by the sauce tasted like a hybrid of ketupat and nasi-​lemak. The rice had a sticky texture but gives out with whiffs of coconut fragrance.
we also tried the hot and sour prawn rice noodles, Modernist Chicken Curry, and Pear and Salmon
For desserts, go for the avo-​choco emotion $ 12. The avocado mousse did not had an overpowering vegetable smell and complemented with the airy, lightly-​sweetened chocolate layer. Not too creamy and thus a good end for the meal. other desserts we’ve tried: yoghurt chocolate parfait and banana pastillas
Perhaps whether the food is egg free, gluten free etc… or not may not be that significant in influencing our health, ultimately it is still dependent on what and how much we choose to consume.