Less Expensive Dining in Oxford, England

Less Expensive Dining in Oxford, England


These days the dollar is weak and the cost of living in the United Kingdom seems to be pretty high, leaving the average traveller from these United States with the need to economise as much as possible. It seems all too easy to go to a fairly simple, basic sort of a restaurant in England and pay $40 dollars for what one would expect to pay no more than $20 in Chicago. In order to leave sufficient funds for the really important things, namely, books and beer, I decided therefore to try to save a little money by taking some of my meals during my recent stay in Oxford at more humble and, crucially, less expensive establishments. I was reasonably satisfied with the places I came across.

***
The last time I was in England was in January of 2003 for a conference in London. That was for me the first time back in that city in quite a few years and among the things I wished to do on one of the days off from the conference was visit a fish and chips shop. Over the course of several days and a number of very long walks through town, I came across only one such shop which looked a little seedy and quite promising but, at the moment I went by, featured a couple of patrons squaring off at the door in what seemed to be the shouting match that would serve as prelude to a drunken fist-fight. I decided not to go in. The next day I started asking around for recommendations for a fish and chip shop and repeatedly was told that, sadly, there were few in central London and that modern tastes and economics had rendered them more a peripheral and suburban sort of an eatery these days. In the end, I left England with my desire for that form of ‘street-food’ unfulfilled.

The hankering for fish and chips was reawakened when I travelled to England earlier this month and I again set out on long walks keeping an eye out for any reasonable looking ‘chippy’. I came across only one chippy, which in fact was somewhat hidden away, down a little alley beside what I think might well be an associated Indian Restaurant. As I moved down the alley, I had a sinking feeling that this experience would not be a particularly good one but then thought again of the financial considerations and decided to forge on ahead and do the dirty deed. At the end of the alley, I hesitantly crossed the threshold, peeked in and –– before I had time to reconsider my decision again –– heard warm greetings from a female voice with an Indian or Pakistani accent. This is what I saw of the Carfax Fish and Chip Shop:


I placed my order –– a large cod and chips and a bottle of water –– and sat down to wait beneath a television set. Beside the t.v. was this sign, which saddened me, as I realised that with Amata back in Chicago and me in Oxford all alone, I was missing out on a potentially very romantic dining experience:


After a couple of minutes, my meal was ready and the lady behind the counter asked if I’d like vinegar applied to the food; I said yes. Here’s how my cod and chips looked (after a couple of bites):


All in all, I was very pleasantly surprised. The fish itself was quite delicious and the jacket of batter was, well, properly greasy and vinegary and salty and tasty. Particularly surprised I was at the chips, which were crispy on the outside and very moist and soft –– even creamy –– on the inside. Coming at the end of a long and rather hot day, preceded immediately by a late-afternoon / early-evening pub crawl, this meal may have seemed better than it really was in some theoretical sense, but as it was, I was happy.

Incidentally, the fish and chips, my ‘cheap’ meal, cost £4, that is, between $7 and $8. That's not counting the water.

***

On one of the ‘free’ days before the Symposium, having had no breakfast and wishing to spend the better part of the afternoon in the Ashmolean, I decided to do ‘brunch’. On the somewhat scruffier westside of town, on Gloucester Green (near the train station), I came across a Pakistani run fast-food joint, "Kebab Kid," and decided to give it a go. I ordered a “döner kebab on naan” (more expensive than on pitta) with garlic sauce. This is what I got:


It was, in fact, a rather massive amount of food and pretty good in all the bad ways fast food can simultaneously be both good and bad. The garlic sauce turned out to be mayo-based and I have limited tolerance for mayo, but I was able to push most of it aside and obtain a better ratio of stuff to sauce. The naan was an excellent vehicle for this pile of meat and salad and my only complaint (aside from the excess of mayo-based garlic sauce) was that more of the spicy pickled peppers would have been good to have. At £3.95, this was not all that cheap a meal, given what it was, but it was pretty good, in a fast-food sort of way.

***

I like pub food in the British Isles a lot but don’t eat it all that often. One reason is that, when staying in a b-and-b, the breakfasts –– already paid for –– are always so voluminous and filling that my appetite usually hasn’t recovered sufficiently by lunch time to allow for a heavy midday meal. Being something of a Mediterranean type, I’m also generally inclined to eat my evening meal rather late and many pubs, if they serve food in the evening at all (actually, that seems nowadays to be the norm, but once upon a time, that was not the case, at least in some of the places I spent time in), shut the kitchen down long before Don Antonio is ready to put the feed-bag on.

Be that as it may, I did have an evening meal at a pub in Oxford earlier this month, eating at the for me absurdly early hour of 7 p.m. (local time). My internal clock had been somewhat disrupted by the flight and concomitant eating-in-transit schedule. My intention was just to relax and have a few pints and then move on to another locale for dinner, but the pints I was having were so scrumpily delicious –– Old Rosie’s Scrumpy (cider) –– that I couldn’t get myself to move. In addition, the food I saw passing by looked pretty good and the prices seemed tolerable. I ordered a plate of lamb, described on the menu as “slow-cooked Welsh lamb with barley gravy, new potatoes, and seasonal vegetables, served with crusty bread”:


This plate of food looked really inviting, I thought, but when I dug in, I was disappointed to find that it was all rather bland. Only the meat, which was far more mutton-like than I would expect from the advertised ‘lamb’ had a pronounced flavour, though I must add, that I was in no way unhappy about the mutton flavour, just a little surprised. But all was not lost: on the table stood salt and pepper shakers and a little bottle of vinegar and, through application of these three condiments, this plate of food was transformed from something very bland to something quite tasty. On reflection, it seems to me that the English often intentionally underseason a bit and leave it to the individual to add seasoning and/or sauces to perk up the food. In any event, I was happy enough with this meal, which was after all an accompaniment to the delicious scrumpy of Old Rosie. At about £6-7, it was not cheap, though it was cheaper than what one would find in most of the restaurants.

The pub in question here was the Turf Tavern, which is hidden away on an alley off of Holywell Street. It's an old place with much character and some very handsome and friendly young people doing the serving.

***

I had only one genuinely disappointing meal in Oxford, a dinner at an Indian restaurant that was by no means bad but certainly nothing more than ordinary, but then at a price that struck me as absurdly high. But taking all into consideration, from the Symposium’s Moroccan feast to the fish and chips, I would say that despite the high fares on the fare, I fared pretty well in Oxford.

Antonius

Great report Antonius - that shot of the fish n' chip shop is making me acutely homesick. I love the romantic fish' n chips poster too - for some reason, this is an extremely common type of poster (or used to be, at least) in this type of environment. When I was a lad, my local chippie had a poster on the wall advertising Pukka Pies which showed an amorous young couple parked on a hilltop in a convertible Ferrari, drinking champagne and enjoying a nice tray of pie n' chips. The slogan, if I recall correctly, was "Socialize...with Pukka Pies".

Clearly, this is a topic for next years Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery....

LionRock:

Many thanks... I'm glad I struck a nostalgic chord... Someone else I showed the first picture to had a similar reaction, saying that the Carfax shop has the look of a good old sort that is (not surpisingly, I suppose) less common these days, at least in some places. (Elsewhere I'll comment on the decline of the Belgian fritkoten.)

Pukka Pies were, I think, also for sale at the Carfax chippie (I know I saw signs advertising them somewhere and likely in multiple places), as well as a number of other items that struck me as being interesting. Unfortunately, I didn't jot down notes at the time and also failed to take a picture of the menu.

I mentioned I hadn't been to England for a long time, before getting back to London in early 2003 and then this trip to Oxford. Both of those visits were a blast, in large measure on account of the genuine friendliness of so many people I met and had a chance to chat with.

And did I mention how good the ales and ciders are?



A

Antonius wrote:I again set out on long walks keeping an eye out for any reasonable looking ‘chippy’. I came across only one chippy, which in fact was somewhat hidden away, down a little alley beside what I think might well be an associated Indian Restaurant. As I moved down the alley, I had a sinking feeling that this experience would not be a particularly good one but then thought again of the financial considerations and decided to forge on ahead and do the dirty deed.

Antonious,

We are talking fish and chips here, right?

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:

Antonius wrote:I again set out on long walks keeping an eye out for any reasonable looking ‘chippy’. I came across only one chippy, which in fact was somewhat hidden away, down a little alley beside what I think might well be an associated Indian Restaurant. As I moved down the alley, I had a sinking feeling that this experience would not be a particularly good one but then thought again of the financial considerations and decided to forge on ahead and do the dirty deed.

Antonious,

We are talking fish and chips here, right?

Enjoy,
Gary

Of course! Surely you know that those of us who bear the name 'Antonius' are especially renowned for resisting temptations of the flesh*:





The art is to know which kind of chippy to avoid.

(De heilige)
Antonius

* Nota bene: The meal in question was appropriate for a fast day.