Restaurant review: O’Shin, Elysium Hotel, Paphos

When you initially hear the name O’Shin, it is only natural to think of an Irish bar but the word has a variety of meanings, with the most likely being Japanese for ‘flower’. However, do not let the name perturb you from visiting, as O’Shin was one of my favourite restaurants for pan-Asian food before our enforced (now distant) stay-at-home period. It was a place to visit for special occasions. For some reason, it has not been on my radar, as living in a tourist hotspot, it is actually very easy to forget that some (not all) of the best restaurants are hidden in hotels.

O’Shin is positioned off the lovely, long, arched corridor on the ground floor, but you are transported to the Far East once you go through the door. The restaurant is designed to be authentic and traditional, reflecting the cuisine, while lattice panels separate the areas. Upon entering, we met Andreas, the restaurant manager, who had his eyes everywhere throughout the evening. Supported by his team, the service was exceptional from start to finish.

At this point, I must say that I am a massive fan of Asian cuisine. The menu at O’Shin offers a huge variety from the five regions of Asian cooking. Having not visited for several years, we were determined to go through the menu and make up for lost time! It offers sushi platters, starters, dim sum, salads, soups, mains, tempura, and more. It is tough to select when there are so many tempting options.

The restaurant is well-known for its sushi, so we started with Volcano Rolls, maki sushi rolls filled with eel and avocado and finished with their signature volcano sauce. Eel would not be something I would generally relish, but this combination offered an explosion of solid flavours. We accompanied this with a Chuca Gomo Wakame Salad, which was seaweed with a peanut and sesame dressing. It was full of flavour and incredibly fresh. Our final starter was one of the stand-out dishes of the meal, Miso Marinated Beef Carpaccio. As a huge fan of miso, this was the perfect dish with the thinnest slices of beef tenderloin marinated for 48 hours. Melt in the mouth is a much-overused expression, but in this case, it was very accurate when served with crispy shitake mushrooms and a creamy yuzu sauce.

The main part of the menu is divided into meat and fish dishes, and during my previous visits, I have always had the Prawn Tempura; however, we decided to choose two from the speciality section and share. The first was the Miso Roasted Black Cod, a dish I would not recommend sharing. I’m sure my dining companion thought I was greedy, but as it went down, you just wanted more and more of the chunks of cod cooked in manuka honey and served with oyster mushrooms marinated in sake. The piquant sweet flavours will be something I will try to recreate at home, but I doubt I will ever come close. Black Angus Rolls were our other choice from the menu: grilled rib-eye rolls filled with enoki mushrooms and marinated spring onions with a yaki sauce. Again, this offered an extremely tasty experience reflecting the skill of the kitchen. On the side, we enjoyed a small bowl of Thai-steamed rice.

To conclude the meal, there were five desserts, so we went for two to share. The first was a Vanilla and Lime Custard Cake, served with small meringues and an unusual sesame ice cream with a passion fruit coulis on the side. It was nice, but the Chocolate Pearl, a bitter manjari chocolate sphere which melted in the middle with echoes of coconut, mango and ginger, was the winning dessert with intense and deep flavours.

It was the savoury dishes at O’Shin that delivered a burst of contrasting flavours, which is most typical of Asian cuisine. Indeed, it was my mistake to have forgotten this restaurant for such a long time. It was packed the night we visited, so booking is highly recommended.

VITAL STATISTICS

SPECIALTY Pan-Asian

WHERE Elysium Hotel, Paphos

WHEN 7-11.30pm

CONTACT 26 844444

HOW MUCH Sushi from €14.50, Starters from €11, Dim Sum from €10, Salads from €14, Soups from €8, Mains from €23, Speciality Dishes from €39, Wok from €19 and desserts from €9