A good place for posh grub
We wanted to go to Oxford to see my daughter, who has just started a course there. And my mother wanted to come with us and buy us a nice lunch. So I started to look for somewhere nice to eat.
I did look online, but the internet was pretty useless: it provided us with a huge number of recommendations among which were a branch of Subway the sandwich bar and some suburban Indian restaurants with names like ‘Star of India’.
So I emailed my friend Andrew. Andrew is a professor who has worked at the university and still lives in the town. He emailed me back. ‘I’d suggest the Old Parsonage – I haven’t been for years but it’s always been good, traditional, on the pricey side and the sort of restaurant you’d imagine from all those films they set in early 20th century Oxford’. So I booked.
Anyway, we went along for a meal. The restaurant itself is about two minutes walk from my daughter’s college, which is very handy.
My children after a good meal
It is a lovely building, and is part of a hotel. It is made of old stone, and looks very rustic and historic. The dining room is hung with oil paintings – most of which appear to be from the first half of the twentieth century.
Now the menu isn’t cheap. Most of the starters are seven or eight pounds, while the mains range from £15 to £50. For starters my son and I had a wonderful French fish soup with aioli (garlic mayonnaise) and croutons. This was done really well done, very authentic – lots of great flavours of fish. My wife and daughter each had beautifully fresh smoked salmon.
The main courses were similarly good. My wife had some very good fish cakes, which were a relative bargain at £15. My mum and son had fillet steak – £32. I went absolutely mad and had a veal chop and kidney cooked in garlic and rosemary for £49.50. My chop was extremely expensive, but immensely tasty. It was cooked beautifully – and it was a big chunk of meat. OK, it wasn’t cheap, but it was a real treat. Oh, and because it was lunchtime, we didn’t drink very much. My daughter and I each had a very acceptable glass of Languedoc rose.
The portions were big, so we weren’t really in the mood for pudding. My son had a very nice pear and apple crumble. Anyone can knock out a reasonable crumble, but what was particularly nice was the delicious custard, which was made of real eggs and was flavoured with fresh vanilla. Add a couple of coffee and the bill for the five of us came to £250.
It was a lovely meal. Not just because of the food – which was very good. It was just a nice place to sit, the staff was helpful and it was pleasantly busy – but not packed.
And in the front there is a sort of bar, which had a stone floor. As we were leaving we got talking to a very nice academic, who had brought his dog and was having a drink with a friend. We were just remarking what a lovely dog he had, when the animal produced a great spray of yellow diarrhoea. My daughter and I fell about laughing. I’m not sure that this is a regular part of the entertainment offered at the Old Parsonage, but it meant that we left with a smile.
see also Silk – a posh Indian food in a remarkable venue