A triumph of style over cooking (bring your own stock cubes)
I've been before a few times but I don't remember it ever being this bad. The restaurant decor is easy on the eye and seat. It's a conservatory but not in a suburban Brewer's Fayre sort of way. The staff are polite, educated, helpful and professional. I guess that's Oxford for you. The noise level is tolerable for what was a busy evening with a young crowd. The tables are reasonably spaced. The portions are most generous. The quality of the food is quite DREADFUL. Almost all of what we had tasted of nothing. It is hard to believe they actually have a chef in the kitchen, more likely a first-year canteen operative. I could have added salt and pepper from the table, maybe even mustard and ketchup. But there is more to cooking than such basic seasoning. I've got no proof of this but the guinea fowl didn't taste like guinea fowl. It tasted like a chicken from a cheap supermarket, ie it looked like chicken, it had the texture of chicken but it tasted like nothing at all. Desserts followed the same path – fancy names on the menu for what were tasteless lumps of ersatz, probably bought in. Our meals were served on some sort of rectangular slate slab. Quite why I haven't the faintest idea. It certainly doesn't make eating the stuff any easier. However, since most of it was uneatable except for the prevention of malnutrition, these slates were not in the end a handicap. Maybe this is where all those stolen church roof slates get sold on to. Maybe I have to come to terms with the fact that eating out in these sort of pseudo trendy places is for relaxation or posing rather than the enjoyment of good cooking.