Has been looking forward to try Oru and so excited to come here.
The restaurant sits in a 1940s home where they restored.
This is a 24- seats counter. The only difference is that they have a rolling dining time, instead of specific seating times.
I got the Grape Spritz - it has green grape, jasmine tea for flavor and soda. It's not too sweet and it's kinda nice.
This is Trout Roe Service. it's super cute. It has a play of roe, hay smoked butter, and taiyaki. Growing up taiyaki usually have fillings in the middle, but these are all waffles. So treat it like bread, open it up, get some butter and top it with some roe. It's pretty delicious.
Sorry, just one more pic of the fishies, they are too cute.
This is the Nibitasu Salad, which has eggplant, tomato, and crispy shrimp leg. The crispy added texture so the dish is not all mushy. But the sauce that accompanies it is pretty decent.
This is Tofu Karrage - the sauce on top was pretty good.
This is Waygu Lumpia - it has a thinly sliced waygu wrapped around crispy egg roll fried with tallow. I will say, as much as I've heard about this dish, it was underwhelming. I like the creativeness of it, but the flavor is lacking, even with it cooked in tallow. That was a bummer.
This is Chawamushi - sadly, the temp was too lukewarm and the roe was too cold, so the temp lost me there. Then, the texture of the egg custard is too undercooked, it's too mushy. So even thought they have delicious mushroom inside, it was just not doing it for me.
For Nigiri: we got Hotate (scallop) very good texture and lemony. Then Madai (R), it was a tad chewy.
Sawara - King Mackerel - it's so good that it melts in your mouth, there's a little crispy bits in there too. So good. The other is Otoro - fatty tuna, which you cannot go wrong with that.
Here we have chef showing off the Uni.
These are from Maine, which has a cleaner flavor, very similar to Hokkaido kind.
Here's another check showing off their hand rolls
It was Masaba - which is Japanese Mackerel, the smell was good, but the temp was too cool for my liking.
This is Seared Barracuda - never had it before. Not my fav but I tried it.
This is Uni Okoge, which has Uni, confit pearl onion, rice porridge. The rice has a texture of risotto, and it does taste like cheese, but it's actually that is from uni butter. The onion here is not my jam, but the uni butter rice is pretty good.
For dessert, we have: Banana Caviar - the caviar made it a tad salty, but the ice cream does taste legit real banana.
This is the Coconut Sorbet - This is the best one that the entire group agreed on. It has a hint of mint, but they scraped the inside of a coconut and made ice cream out of it. And it's true, every bite tasted like real coconut.
For desserts, the fishes made a re-appearance. Again, the Taiyaki doesn't have filling. Because you're suppose to dig into the cup to get the filling.
The cup has crispy rice, Nutella, and strawberry jam at the bottom. I guess you can dig into the depth and grab all 3 flavors together and smear it over the waffle. But honestly, all I needed was the Nutella and I can do without the other layers.
I enjoyed the service, everyone there were exceptional, very knowledgeable about the dishes and can explain the food. Watching the sushi chef work their magic is always fun. The place is very clean cut, but so much so that the sound system is echo-y that wasn a tad of a bummer can't hear each other, but can hear folks across loud and clear. I do appreciate the rolling seating unlike Neo which has designated seating times.
Anyway, the place only has 24 seats, obviously you should make a reso. Can you do walk in? Yes, there's a small 'bar' area that try to accommodate, but don't count on that. Parking is tight, the lot is small, but do-able. The good thing is since the dining time is rolling, you can easily find a spot as people are coming and going. I will say, our dinner was at 6:30p, kinda busy, but by 8:30p either folks are near done eating, or it's well underway. There's no line waiting on a. weekend night that we were there. So you can definitely do a progressive crawl and end here.
Oru
746 W. 24th Street
Houston, TX
