‘O Ver

Address:  44-46 Southwark St, London SE1 1UN
Bookings:  Walk in
Day:  Wednesday
Meal:  Dinner
Price: ££
Rating: 6.5/10

O’ ver is a Neapolitan restaurant around the corner from Borough Market. On its menu, it boasts rather bizarrely that in its cooking it uses the unique ingredient of sea water, “extracted from the purest areas of the Mediterranean.”

It is hard to believe that every fistful of spaghetti and every ball of dough served in this restaurant are brought to completion with water lugged out of the sea over 1,000 miles away in the Mediterranean. Surely this would require a small team of planes perpetually in motion between Heathrow and Naples International Airport, the pilots only stopping momentarily to mop their brows and take a sip of water (hopefully not also scooped out of the sea), before taxiing off again to get the next barrel of warm, salty acqua.

And why on earth would sourcing your sea water on the other side of Europe make a pizza taste nicer? Are the sweet coastal waters of Devon and Cornwall not sufficient? Never mind. In the ever more saturated eco-system of London restaurants, perhaps the saltier the gimmick the better.

Whatever ingredients they’re using, the food at O’ Ver is pretty good. Their rosemary ‘seawater’ focaccia infused with melted parmesan was criminally moreish. The sort of starter that you can feel yourself filling up on with each bite, so you promise not to touch any more until your mains come, only to miserably break the pledge moments later, the bread just too warm, too cheesy, too plump and too nourishing to ignore for more than 30 seconds at a time.

My partner in culinary crime, whose appetite for fish is well flagged on this blog, tore through a red tuna tartare sat on a bed of avocado, dressed with olive oil and a sprinkling of lime juice. I heard no complaints.

I had a lobster linguine, which was a little poor. The lobster, sourced in far off Canada, had travelled a long way to disappoint me in Borough. It was a small little fellow, with a lot of shell and very little meat. It could have done with fattening up a little bit more off the coast of Nova Scotia. The tomato sauce that came with it could have been popped out of jar of Loyd Grossman Pomodoro sauce.

My partner in culinary crime had a pizza with burrata, mozzarella, Italian sausage, cherry tomatoes and basil, with truffle oil drizzled on it. It was a decent pizza, if a little wet and a little limp.

O’ Ver has an al fresco dining option, which is not as appealing as it sounds, even in the middle of a very warm London summer, unless you enjoy getting gassed by bus fumes.

O’ ver is a steady, solid restaurant, which will appeal to pizza lovers, or those who refuse to eat anything not prepared with Mediterranean seawater. For the general diner, Borough Market has better options, Brindisa, Padella, and El Pastor, to name a few. O’ Ver and out.