The Vegan Guide to Oxford

Kake, 7 Jan 2000

I can't comment on the normal menu here, because I went over the Christmas/New Year period when they were only serving the special party menu. This is the same as their regular All-You-Can-Eat menu, which offers as much as you want of 3 courses for £12.95 (Sunday-Wednesday) and £13.95 (Thursday-Saturday) a head.

The first course, in which you can choose 5 dishes, includes 3 vegan options: deep-fried seaweed, won-ton wrappers and spring rolls (you need to specifically ask that these be made vegetarian as otherwise the seaweed has fish powder on top and the spring rolls contain meat). The seaweed and spring rolls were truly excellent, but the won-ton wrappers (unfilled) were a bit greasy and boring.

The second course allows you to choose two dishes; the only vegetarian one (it's also vegan) is mushroom satay, which is nice, but it ain't satay.

The third course allows 5 choices, and includes I think 3 vegetable dishes, but no tofu. We had curry vegetables, and Chinese mushrooms with something else. You have a choice of noodles, boiled rice, or egg-fried rice to go with it. The veg dishes were OK, but nothing special.

The house red wine is £7.50 a bottle, and is nice and light and goes very well with the food. I didn't check whether they knew if it was vegetarian, sorry. In conclusion, this is a pretty nice restaurant with smart decor. The best course for vegans on the set menu was the first, by miles, and I'd like to go back and see what the full menu is like.