Restaurant review: Ocras is serving up some of the best food at the Marina Market
Ocras Seafood and Snax, at Cork's Marina Market
8/10
An old French friend came to stay with me in July and, as ever, time together revolved around great food and fine wines, consumed in gout-inducing quantities.
One morning, needing to catch up on work, I sent her roaming around the parish, to walk along the River Lee, explore the gorgeous redeveloped Marina park, and finally, lunch at the Marina Market.
As arranged, I drove down to collect her afterwards and, a long-standing Hibernophile with a fierce grá for Irish seafood, she emerged raving about scallops with pancetta, leek, and seaweed cream she had just enjoyed at one of the stalls she called, ‘Ock … rah?’
“Oh, you mean Ocras,” says I, explaining it was the Irish word for ‘hunger’.
Back then, I had yet to see, let alone eat at, Ocras, but word about chef Lee Kennedy’s new seafood stall had already begun to filter back and reports were promising.
A few days later, La Daughter and I, homeward bound and too hungry to last until home, called in as the Marina Market was winding down for the night, deciding we might as well give the Ocras stall a quick once over.
First of all, Ocras is another ‘stall’ just as the Sistine Chapel is another ‘church’.
Nestling into one corner of the giant hangar that houses the Marina Market, it takes up the floor space of possibly four regular stalls, and is tastefully finished in varnished timber.
A long counter with stools runs parallel to the kitchen while ‘booths’ of salvaged timber add further seating options.
The smart new kitchen itself, including a blast freezer and multiple cooking stations, is fit for any sizeable bricks and mortar restaurant.
The menu is substantial and ambitious. It begins with oysters, followed by 14 seafood mains, from familiar ‘chipper’ fare, such as scampi, fish and chips, and the Ocras Seafood Cone (after the Italian seaside ‘cuoppo’ of rolled-up newspaper filled with fried fish pieces), to more ‘elevated’ dishes such as chowder, sandwiches of crab and smoked salmon, lobster and crayfish roll, and yellow fin tuna tartare.
Coffees, made with West Cork’s Stone Valley Coffee beans, are excellent.
But, 30 minutes before closing, daily specials are done for the day, and anyway, a weary LD is in no mood for ‘experimentation’.
Oysters come three ways: Naked, tempura style or roasted. Raw (one for €5, three for €13) will always be my preference, and these fine oysters from Cromane Bay, Co Kerry, have a potent marine umami after a period of fine, dry weather (less fresh rainwater flowing into the sea increases salinity) but I also order tempura style (three for €14), part of my ongoing campaign to convert LD to the wonders of the magical mollusc.
The batter is an airy crunch, the oyster meat’s muscular flavours intensified by heat, a very more-ish mouthful, though LD remains agnostic on the ‘oyster question’
Crispy fried buttermilk calamari (€15.90) in a lovely light batter are both toothsome and tender, well partnered with baby gem lettuce, a shaving of tart-sweet pickled mango, lush, creamy garlic and lemon aioli, and the saline snap of samphire.
Fish taco (€16.50) is perfectly cooked goujons of Mexican beer-battered hake, fish tender and ever so slightly sweet, grounded by earthy corn tortilla.
A salsa, billed as Pico de Gallo, but without the more usual chilli hit, instead divines heat alongside in the form of whole pickled green jalapeno, while a spicy lemon and dill dressing completes a good dish with bright, fresh citric and anise notes soaring skywards.
Ocras pride themselves on their thrice-cooked hand-cut beef dripping chips (€6.90) — paired with garlic and lemon aioli or truffle and aged parmesan aioli.
It is a pride well merited, cooked almost confit-style to a golden crisp exterior housing fluffy, floury spud, seasoned with compelling house seasoning, which includes dried nori.
All in all, it is a very impressive offering and, determined to dive deeper into the menu, I return again in the following weeks, trying lobster and crayfish roll, a cornucopia of fine seafood in excellent house-baked brioche rolls; a very smart fish burger; and delightful tuna tartare, though an excess of admittedly good accompaniments (avocado, miso sesame dressing, wasabi mayonnaise, pickled ginger, and addictive in-house baked nori crackers) at times distracts from the starring tuna.
Welshman Kennedy was formerly head chef of the Blue Haven, Kinsale, and then the Old Head of Kinsale Golf Links restaurant, and his decade and more in that gourmet gateway to the Wild Atlantic Way was well spent, not least in the relationships he developed with local fish suppliers and seafood producers.
Sourcing in Ocras is first rate and the installation of a dry-aging fridge has only added to the quality, reducing moisture and concentrating flavours of fish, ever before it is cooked.
Kennedy is still tinkering with components of certain dishes, but the overall level of detail and precision is significant, resulting in some truly delicious seafood.
Any lingering Lenten nightmares of ‘Friday fish’ now firmly belong to yesteryear as we ride a new wave of appreciation for the culinary potential of world-class Irish seafood, especially when delivered to a high standard but in a more casual and approachable style.
Kennedy is doing precisely that at Ocras and right now is serving up some of the finest food of all to be had at Marina Market.
- Ocras Seafood & Snax
- Marina Market, Centre Park Rd, Ballintemple, Cork
- Lunch for two, €61.40
- facebook.com/Ocras-Seafood-Snax
