Oxford manages to punch well above its weight for good eating. The Cowley Road’s stuffed to the gills with restaurants, there are more pubs serving slightly overpriced variations on the humble pie than anyone could possibly want, and if you fancy a sandwich there can’t be many better similar sized towns in Britain to live in – a friend once used to forcefully insist that Olives deserved a Michelin star (Christophe – you can send the cheque in the post). Cooks don’t have to rely on supermarkets: between the Covered Market’s grocers, butchers and fishmongers and the fulsome delis dotted all over the place you can create handsome meals at a decent price.
Even the most ardent gastronauts, however, will eventually find a time when the only option is Hall. This can come as late as Finals-induced agoraphobia, or as early as freshers fearing to tread beyond the walls of their college lest they miss out on a friendship. When it does come you can be snookered. Halls vary enormously (for some reason Lincoln’s rumoured to be running an operation so delicious that they must’ve kidnapped the third Roux at birth and raised him as the chef; everyone else seems to run on a spectrum from amiably average to crap). Food quality would’ve been a bloody silly thing to choose a college on (though the longer you’re here the more you realise there are worse reasons), but it’s nice to know what you’re missing out on.
That, at least, is the rationale for these columns, where I’ll be venturing trying to get an idea of where college food’s being done badly and (hopefully) where it’s being done well. How are Corpus’s casseroles? Does Kellogg serve anything but cereal? Do the cooks at Blackfriars burn everything that meets their pans? We shall see.
Keble:
They say to start with what you know – but separating one particular Keble lunch from the hundreds the reviewer's enjoyed and endured over the past three years has proved quite hard. Fond memories of Gerard McHugh, Keble's profanity-spouting martinet of a hall manager, cloud the mind.
This wasn't one of G's better days though. Burger in a bap with potato wedges is never popular and Thursday was no different to normal. It attempted to make up with size what it lacked in flavour, but the stodgy, fist-sized patty was dry and pappy, while the bap was far too doughy. While the wedges were delicious, this wasn't enough to salvage the dish. Many Kelblites attempted to rescue things by tricking out their burger from the salad bar – which was fulsome, though everything shared a certain taste of plastic. Help-yourself onion gravy was tasty and was necessary to counter the overwhelming dryness of everything else.
An unexpected bonus was ratatouille, whose appearance sparked hopes that Keble's much-feted 'Hall Renaissance' (Soup! Salad dressing! Porridge! 2011/2012 was full of previously undreamed of victories) would be continuing into the next academic year. Alas, it was merely leftovers from the night before. What with the burger bap, ratatouille potatoes, wedges and the inevitable pasta bake option you could have gorged your way into a carb-induced coma with ease.
A special mention should be made of Keble's hot drinks machine, a baffling Rube Golderg contraption that seems able to make any beverage under the sun. It never fails to utterly confuse first-time users or to make a first-class instant coffee. Cold drinks will only be a let down now that the hall have stopped supplying Mr. Juicy orange juice, defenestrating Keble's most popular man – the good Mr. Juicy was something of an icon, and his martyrdom is remembered with a sigh.
Keble lunch does a lot of things well. Stews and curries are strengths, as are desserts, but anyone coming to visit the enormous hall would be well-advised to avoid burger day.
St. Peter's:
A warm and friendly lunch in St. Peter’s this Monday, in a college renowned for its hospitality. The cosy (in the estate agent’s usage) hall was full of bustle, and well-lit too in a welcome change from the musky, dungeon-like offerings of some colleges. Another happy difference from the norm was that fellows eat lunch with students - rather than being spirited off to a mahogany-panelled inner sanctum the Master of the college, former Radio 4 honcho Mark Damazer and pals ate among us.
Soups can be quite lazy affairs in institutional catering, bushels of stock cubes cut with essence of mushroom or similat, but the Peter’s kitchen has nailed it with a thick, delicately spiced butternut squash number, freshened up lightly with coconut and ginger. I could have had it by the gallon.
A chicken supreme with lemon and coriander was delightfully flavoured but too dry to be that fond of. Potatoes with a robust and herby tomato sauce and a medley of French beans and sugar snap peas made more than passable sides though, and my friends’ vegetable lasagne had them grasping for the superlatives. A bountiful salad bar, rather than the slim pickings that usually pass for a healthy choice, completed the array of options, not a real dud among them.
So I left impressed – though the Peter’s regulars around me warned that there’s always a vertiginous decline in quality as term goes on, and it wasn’t the most thrifty of meals. Still if you’re in the George Street area and fancy a change from the chain-restaurant crap that passes for eating on that road, amble up New Hall Inn Street, sketch past the porters and enjoy one of the better college halls – with hearty company.
St. Catz:
What better time to pop in for lunch at St. Catz than in its fiftieth anniversary year? The hall itself is unlike any other I’ve visited much more light and airy with an enormously high vaulted ceiling – you feel like you’ve wandered into a Blair-vintage PFI-funded academy, which is an architectural style I’m quite fond of: far better that than yet another grim teak-paneled number.
Fine weather on Wednesday though meant that we were able to dine al fresco – as far as I know a rarity among college lunches and an absolute pleasure. I’m a complete nut for eating outside, to the point of risking pneumonia for a December breakfast in the open air, and so I couldn’t have been happier. If only more colleges would let this happen…
The food was OK, a chicken blanquette served with rice and peas unlikely to spur anyone on to rhapsodies of wonder but more than enough to set you up for a solid afternoon shift in the neighboring SSL. A well-stocked salad bar meant there was sufficient choice, and some particularly lurid tropical juice had enough e-numbers in to leave me bouncing off the walls.
All in all a thoroughly pleasant trip. Catz is unlikely to get much through-trade but the al fresco gambit means it’s well worth it if you’ve ensconced yourself in any of the equally depressing Manor Road complex libraries – scrounge off a pal’s Bod Card and dream you’re in an Italian piazza rather than what resembles an early GoldenEye level.
Hertford:
Full disclosure – I was prepared to dislike Hertford. Since the bastards sent me off to Keble before even interviewing me I’ve been cultivating a three-year grudge. The Bridge of Sighs? I can take it or leave it. Evelyn Waugh? I prefer Steve Waugh. Will Hutton? Polly Toynbee all the way.
Within honest-to-god seconds of entering Hertford though my sneer was replaced with a beaming grin – they have a college cat. What manner of man could hate a college with its own cat? Certainly not me, and from then on in I was sold.
A relatively dinky hall played host to lashings of moreish moussaka – heavy on the cheese and oil, pretty light on aubergine, but delicious all the same (probably because of all that cheese and oil). The salad bar was hands down the best of its kind I’ve seen so far, with about six options including a Waldorf salad, the first time I’ve encountered one since Fawlty Towers.
I also managed to be smuggled in to Hertford’s SCR, which is a delightful room, containing more periodicals than the Terminal 5 WHSmith. Smug with my infiltration I missed the instructions for the coffee machine and ended up spending five minutes filling spare china tea cups with dirty water as I’d accidentally pressed the button that cleans the contraption, watched by nonplussed ancient dons.
All in all a pleasant lunch, and along with my meal I had to eat my words. Even without the cat it’d be a lovely place but the moggy sends Hertford into the premier league of colleges.
St. Anne's:
Moving up in the world this week to the comfortable enclaves of leafy north Oxford as I had a lunch in St. Anne's. Strolling up the Woodstock Road past upmarket delicatessens and bouji pubs I was suddenly very aware of my current east Oxford base and began to feel the first pangs of jealousy. I took my place in St. Anne's hall and assessed things. Recently refurbished the building's one of the most pleasant I've eaten in, enormous windows and a bloody great skylight letting the light stream in and resembling a mid-level provincial town's arts centre.
Burger and chips again, the potential variations of which I've become very familiar with over the past few weeks. This was one of the stronger contenders though, as whatever ungodly oil the chips had been cooked in lent a savoury twang and a genuine crunch to what were almost certainly frozen, pre-chipped chips. Not the usual doughy jaundiced numbers, they made good eating. The burger itself was actually served medium-rare, a display of culinary daredevilry that left me astonished and very happy indeed - hard-to-find is the institutional cook who'll risk it. Garnish-by-numbers was a single leaf of lettuce, a tomato slice and a completely superfluous wafer-thin slice of Kraft cheese, but this didn't mar what was a very enjoyable burger.
Alongside the main I had a punchy couscous from yet another plentiful salad bar and there were at least three other relatively attractive options for a hot main meal on display. Much to admire about St. Anne's, then, and very little to fault. Not a particularly convenient spot for a working lunch but Jerichoites wandering towards town should pop by for a cheeky nosh sometime.
Queens:
Queen’s has a reputation for being tough to get into. Porters less welcoming than the bouncer outside Cellar left me wondering whether I’d ever get to eat here, an El Bulli of our very own on the High Street. And just like Ferran Adrià’s Catalan temple to food (though with less laboratory equipment and fewer mimetic peanuts), Queen’s hall was well worth the wait.
Even making it through the gate felt like a victory and it turns out that all the overzealous gentlemen of Queen’s lodge have been hiding is a beautifully-kept college.
The serving area was full of food, main courses stacked higgledy-piggledy on top of each other so that it was a minor but enjoyable struggle to work out what was what. I eventually plumped for saag aloo and some roast parsnips. What was most striking was the fact that the serving area was festooned with seriously upmarket brands - Clipper organic tea - and little treats. You get to the till only to be faced with last-minute temptation in the shape of retro sweets - Fry’s Turkish Delight and orange Club Bars. Why more places don’t do this I’m not sure but it made it feel less institutional and more friendly.
More novelty at the table - individual pepper grinders every few seats, along with pots of mustard and bottles of Tabasco. Well the Club Bar doesn’t need a review - obviously it was delicious - but the rest of the meal had me raving as well. The saag aloo was right out of the top drawer and the parsnips had been lathered in mustard and couldn’t have been better. I could bang on and on about Queen’s but safe to say it’s far and away the best college lunch I’ve had.
Final ramblings:
Emotions are running high at Cherwell towers, and it’s time to take an elegiac backward glance at the state of Hall lunches after a term’s delicious investigation. It’s been a pleasant assignment, I won’t lie. Being sent to enjoy a leisurely lunch with your friends at other colleges and have a nose around is unlikely to challenge Kabul or Kinshasa as a tricky beat. But I’ve learnt from it.
The first thing to point out is that, generally speaking, the quality spectrum isn’t that broad. This is another way of saying that, with one noble exception (Queen’s) I may as well have had the same meal every week - hence the increasingly large proportion of the reviews taken up by potshots at the architecture. Pre-term visions of gastronomic palaces sitting cheek-by-jowl with well-upholstered gruel houses never materialised. Simply put most Hall lunches are all right. Not awful, not by a long shot, but not within shouting distance of great. This is food as not unpleasant fuel. And so it has to be, basically. Shifting two hundred covers in an hour or so for under £4 a head is a steep challenge, even without adding matters of taste to the equation.
Regrets? If I had a pound for every person who lambasted me for not making it to Worcester I’d be able to review Le Gavroche. It just wasn’t to be, though from word-of-mouth alone you should probably try to sample it yourselves. Apart from that my main regret is that no other college has copied the Queen’s Orange Club Bar trick - enough to launch any Hall into the top five.
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