OKA Tapasu — Restaurant in Carlisle

Quality food, friendly service, and a welcoming atmosphere.

Located in a central spot, this restaurant offers a fantastic dining experience. While I can’t speak to how authentic the food is to its country of origin, I can say—it’s bloody lovely.

The service is great: quick enough that you’re not left waiting, but never rushed. Staff are always friendly and polite.

It’s also a very clean place—cutlery and everything else is spotless, and the dining area is tidy and always well-prepared on arrival.

There’s a wide variety of dishes, and having visited twice now, the food and drinks have consistently been well-presented and served exactly as you’d expect from a top-quality restaurant. I’ve had the Wagyu burger, which was packed with flavour and clearly made with quality ingredients—the combination of sauces and toppings felt perfectly fitting and really brought it together. The Duck Donburi bowl was also excellent: generous, filling in a good way, with tender duck and vibrant, well-balanced flavours. The sushi rolls are fresh, well-made, and absolutely delicious. Everything I’ve tasted has been fresh, balanced, and enjoyable.

The Biscoff cheesecake is absolutely gorgeous—not too rich or sickly, just really well balanced and moreish.

Portion sizes are good —filling for your average person without being over the top. Nothing has been overly spicy, salty, or heavy with sauce; it all feels well thought out and easy to enjoy.

The atmosphere fits the theme of an Asian-style restaurant—calm, relaxed, and nicely straddling the line between casual and posh. The tables are laid out well for a smaller space; you don’t feel crammed in. My only small gripe is that the speakers are blown out. So it’s kind of like Now That’s What I Call 2010s playing through a water-damaged Bluetooth speaker. The volume’s fine—it just made me laugh.

The pricing feels very reasonable. Both times, I expected the bill to be higher and was pleasantly surprised. A pint is priced as you’d expect in a restaurant, though I can’t speak for cocktails, wine, spirits etc. That said, the overall experience and quality make it well worth the price.

All in all, a fantastic spot—I’ll...

I have broad experience of Japanese, Korean and Chinese food having travelled in the East and lived in cities with “Chinese” quarters etc. I can confirm the food on offer here is REALLY excellent. The menu is a slightly odd mix of Japanese/Vietnamese/Korean and the drinks menu could definitely do with improvement (adding some healthy or culturally appropriate options such as pots of eastern teas and healthy smoothies rather than sugary fizzy drinks). The tableware is for the most part beautiful. The decor is quirky and nice. It is fairly small, the kitchen is very much in the dining space. The music tends to be fairly rubbish and intrusive, some traditional Japanese music, folky music, chilled electronica or quiet downbeat J or K-pop or something would be an improvement on the upbeat cheesy singalong pop and terrible high tempo electronic dance. With loud/high bpm music, loud staff, loud customers and kitchen clanging it can get very noisy, this can really intrude on the dining experience and ability to focus mindfully on the excellent flavours and textures. It is a shame tbh. The staff are informal, mostly attentive, not intrusive with mixed levels of professionalism - loud singing to a loud radio being an example of a lack thereof. I’m all for enjoying your work but when the kitchen is open I think many Chefs forget how intrusive it is to have someone in work mode while you’re trying to relax and eat. I’m not a fan of the open kitchen fad. Separate work and play. The toilets weren’t that clean as a staff member had peed and not even flushed. Hopefully hygiene is otherwise good. It’s definitely more of a café than a “serious” restaurant. If it was a bit quieter, had a bit more elbow/back room and a slightly refined menu it would be an easy 5 stars because the food...

I usually never do this but I had to. I am a big fan of sushi, I've dined in some of the best japanese restaurants and this is not it.

This was a poor representation of the cuisine and incredibly overpriced for what it was. The dumplings were okay but for the price, I expect them to be excellent.

Good dumplings are supposed to be plump, perfectly elastic dough to wrap the juicy, well seasoned, generous portion of meat inside.

These were thin and anemic, cooked poorly as the dough cracked when it wanted to crisp. Meat inside was dry and underseasoned. Sauce outside was good.

I can make better dumplings myself from scratch so therefore unacceptable at this price point.

The sushi rice was overcooked and underseasoned. We had one with the pate and it just does not work at all in a roll, it completely overpowers everything else in the bite and after two bites, we had enough. The nigiri we got was also not great for the aforementioned reasons.

Fish was fresh, I'll give it that. This was the only redeeming part of this meal.

I just had sushi from a mall in Edinburgh and it was more enjoyable than this was.

Im all for fusión but not when it destroys the integrity of the cuisine and has the audacity to overcharge you for the desecration.

I do not recommend this for anyone who is passionate about food or Japanese cuisine, it will break your heart at best and enrage...