Freshly shucked restaurant − and its $98 giant oyster − a treat for seafood lovers

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Every now and then, a restaurant comes along that is almost impossible to consider through the rubric of the traditional restaurant review. Such is the case with Olala, the newest iteration in a group of venues from Van Tran and her family.

Tran, who began her journey in the business as a purveyor of seafood to restaurants and the public, originally opened Muli, a small room in Carlton, in 2023. Then came Muli Express, a stand-up oyster bar on Little Bourke Street, and tiny wine bar Stop Whining, a tongue-in-cheek name referring to the complaints of customers at Muli Express who said they wanted somewhere to sit and, perhaps, a glass of wine.

That attitude – joyful, a little snarky, fiercely independent – permeates everything Tran does, including Olala, a room across from Queen Victoria Market that’s done up in beach house cottage-core frills.

It’s a much bigger space than Muli, and is getting bigger still – Tran is in the process of renovating the next door shopfront to make way for a private dining area, accessible toilets and more restaurant seating. But the best seats in the house are likely to remain the counter spots that face pristine tanks brimming with live seafood.

So what makes Olala so hard to evaluate? It’s that the restaurant is capable of serving some of the most extraordinary food in the city, and also does so with very little care for the conventions of normal service, other than extreme welcome.

It is truly like eating in a family home in many ways, down to the fact that Tran’s son-in-law is running the front-of-house and beverage service, with no prior experience in either, but with a huge amount of enthusiasm for learning both. (His wine list improves hugely on the one at Muli, with a focus on seafood-friendly whites.) Tran is likely to pull up a chair and join you for conversation, and the food takes as long as it takes. I recently spent a rollicking four hours eating there, spent a jaw-dropping amount of money, and ate food I’ll be dreaming about for years.

And yet? I can see how you might go wrong here, order too safely (or smartly, from a budget perspective), and come away bewildered. This is a restaurant for seafood lovers with deep pockets who don’t mind that the brand of hospitality is simply a family that really, truly loves shellfish and wants to tell you all about it and cook it beautifully.

And for the seafood obsessive? Olala can be a rare treat. Take a look at the menu, briefly, but then focus your attention on those tanks. There are at least a dozen varieties of oysters on any given day, ranging from standard to truly rare. (You can pay $98 for one oyster – a hand-dived giant Pacific from Bruny Island about four times the normal size of an oyster – if you’re so inclined.) The best way to go about it is with the combination plates, priced at $38 for six smaller, more common oysters, and $58 for a selection of the rarer, bigger varieties.

Tran keeps the oysters alive in regularly refreshed seawater from the Mornington Peninsula until shucking, and because of the conditions of the tanks, she’s able to serve oysters well out of season simply because she’s kept them alive and healthy that long.

There were yabbies in the tank on one recent visit, which the kitchen steamed simply, and served with a side of salt made in-house from abalone liver – it tasted like pure umami.

If you put yourself in Tran’s capable hands, give her a budget and a list of seafood wishes, magic is possible.

Some of the items from the menu can disappoint. A crab cake was overwhelmed by a too-sweet sauce, for instance. In general, the simpler the preparation, the better. (One notable exception is an abalone and cucumber salad that sings with sesame and tender, delicate abalone.)

And some things may be bewildering to a Western palate, like a tea made from cooking down fish stock to a collagen-rich broth that is as much a health and beauty aid as it is food.

Do you really want scallop essence in your whiskey sour? I tried it and it was…fine! But taking the trope too far is part of the schtick here – there’s oyster ice-cream for dessert if you want it. (I don’t, mostly because I’d rather save room for more fishies.)

It’s thrilling to get a whole sea urchin, cracked and cleaned in front of you, its delicate lobes tasting of ocean funk. A skewer of Gippsland eel was the sweetest, cleanest eel dish I’ve ever had, its meatiness buoyed by lightness rather than oily heft. And if you have the budget to pick out one of the large spiny creatures in the tank and have them cook it, you are in for a real treat. The marron from Margaret River is $158, and prices go up (and up, and up) from there.

Olala is a genuinely odd restaurant, one in which it’s possible to have a gloriously mind-bending meal, or one that leaves you a little befuddled. But if you put yourself in Tran’s capable hands, give her a budget and a list of seafood wishes, magic is possible. Isn’t that so much more interesting than another easy-to-like, easy-to-define bistro?

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