Oha Eatery: Guizhou Food Fusion Like You've Never Seen Before

Oha Café & Eatery is a cozy restaurant that serves experimental/contemporary Guizhou food around a 20-seater bar. After a brief hiatus, they’re back open with a new menu, featuring some obscure Guizhou ingredients like tree bark, and a multiverse of fermentation.

They also had some work done on the space—they’ve removed the walls separating the café from the dining area and now have an open kitchen. The room definitely feels bigger.

The Food

Experimental Guizhou-Inspired Menu

Like the first iteration of Oha's menu, Chef Blake Thornley and the team scoured Guizhou for local produce and inspiration.

One of the more interesting items from their latest haul is tree bark, harvested from a natural reserve 2,250sqm above sea level, purchased from the local market.

Chef Blake Thornley

Traditionally, as I’m told, the bark is boiled and marinated and served as a cold dish. The texture is not far from what it sounds like—leathery where it’s thick, and crinkly where thin.

Red Tea Cured Kingfish (¥48) with mountain tree bark, green apple chili gel and black tea

Another “ingredient” is the use of “sours” to elicit the sour-spicy flavors Guizhou food is known for. There are many variations of the sour—white sour, red sour, hot sour, shrimp sour, smelly sour (mother yeast).

Vegetables pickled in sour served in seasoned sour. Recommended to drink the water.

White sour is made from fermented rice water and red sour is from fermenting tomatoes. The white sour smells more pungent than it tastes, and the milky-white liquid is used as an all-purpose additive in most dishes. Shrimp sour is shrimp enclosed in an urn with fermented rice water, usually for two months, traditionally buried.

Fermentation is a big part of Guizhou food, but when you ferment shrimp, the result can be quite divisive, like the Shrimp Paste Beef Dumplings (¥72).

Shrimp Paste Beef Dumplings

Shrimp paste and air-dried mountain beef are wrapped in old soy sauce-laced dumpling skins with pickled Jerusalem artichoke and tofu purée. The shrimp is pungent, the beef salty; it has a breathy fermentation, as if the dumplings had been cured in alcohol. Oh, and it’s spicy. The shiso leaves and galangal oil does little to mask the strong flavors. It’s an interesting flavor to experience, but I’m unlikely to order it again.

The tree bark and shrimp paste dumplings are the most divisive dishes on the menu.

The rest of the menu appeals to the broader palate with moderate levels of Guizhou cuisine’s intense flavors. Some of it is great, some of it not so polished, but enjoyable nonetheless, given the thought put into the dishes and the price point.

Tofu and Mountain Tomato (¥42) – Goat cheese, clarified fermented tomato juice and shiso oil. Light and airy goat cheese, served chill. Good starter.

Confit Baby Octopus (¥42) with house-smoked bacon, cucumber and jellyfish. The octopus is extremely tender with a light smokiness, an excellent pairing with the mildly sweet bacon.

Konjac and Abalone (¥88) – Fried parsnip and a dumpling skin mask thin slices of abalone and konjac. The konjac is crunchy, almost like pigs ears. It all rests in a kaffir lime and white pepper soup. A favorite. 

Pork Stomach (¥48) with fermented honey, white-hot sour, sheet of radish and tofu cheese crisp in a light sour broth. If you like innards as much as I do, this dish will appease you.

Duck and Sour Radish (¥38) – Sticky rice bites with shredded duck, served with clarified broth. The broth is truly divine. I like the soup more than the sticky rice bites.

Char-Grilled Lamb Ribs (¥82) – #1 Favorite. The braised lamb is so tender it just peels off the bone. Sauces: braising liquid reduced with palm sugar and chili powder, and fermented bean and coconut milk. Served with lamb ragout and stick of mantou. Would definitely order this again. I could do without the puffed rice, though. 

Smoked Peach (¥58) – Soy-based cheesecake, bamboo, citrus. Peach cooked low and slow with black sugar from Yunnan with a spuma of tofu, toasted soy, and baby bamboo. 

Basil Mousse (¥58) – White chocolate, turmeric, lemon sorbet. The strip of basil mousse is quite thick, almost like a sponge cake. It's a filling dessert.

Lunch sets are served every day from 12-2pm. The offerings will rotate regularly. Lunch is great value—¥58 per set, which includes house pickles and vegetables of the day.

Fermented Chili Pork (¥58) – Lunch set with house pickles and vegetables of the day.

Comforting, easy-going lunch

Blistered peppers and eggplant

The Drinks

Coffee & Cocktails

The cafe is open throughout the day. They also have a short and sweet selection of cocktails and natural wine.

No. 23 Latte (¥45) with black sugar from Yunnan and housemade almond milk, Mountain Lemon Pepper Highball (¥68) mountain lemon pepper clover infused bourbon, honey, and tonic.

In Summary

Something New & Exciting

Favorites: Baby Octopus, Konjac and Abalone, Duck and Sour Radish, Lamb Ribs.

Not all the dishes on Oha's new menu are crowd pleasers, but I think that's what they're going for.

The unusual dishes are there for the curious diner, and who knows, you might even like them. Either way, it's ballsy, new, and exciting. If you're not keen on sampling tree bark or highly fermented shrimp, there are plenty of tasty things worth trying.

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Oha Eatery

Address: 23 Anfu Lu, near Changshu Lu 安福路23号, 近常熟路

Tel: [phone]

Hours: 12pm-2pm, 5pm-11pm (food last order 9:30pm)

Cafe is open from 8am-6pm.

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