Reviews
PRESS REVIEWS
- Telegraph Choice
For the past 25 years it has been one of the city’s best and best-known restaurants, a North Oxford landmark still at the top of its culinary game.
Daily Telegraph November 2011
- The Oxford Times: Sultry Music as you eat
Christopher Gray enjoys dinner with jazz at a favourite restaurant
I can’t pretend to be the world’s greatest enthusiast for jazz. Indeed, I once managed, to some readers’ disgust, to write 2,000 words on a visit to New Orleans without mentioning the subject once – a deliberate tease, I don’t deny. But jazz, like food, comes in many forms, and for some of these it is not hard to develop an appetite. Anything with a decent tune usually appeals to me. It so happens this includes New Orleans jazz: the tune, which occurs in every number, is When the Saints Go Marching In.
Last month, in the first of a series of jazz concerts with dinner at Gee’s restaurant, I heard more of my kind of jazz from Polly Gibbons, a regular performer at Ronnie Scott’s. Her speciality is music in the style of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Randy Crawford, Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin. I should, of course, have said ‘styles’, since the sound of these divas is very different, Well done Polly – and band Tim Dawes (bass), Nathan Allen (drums) and Tim Lapthorn (keyboards) – for getting them all so well. High spot for me was Simone’s My Baby Just Cares For Me. It appeals doubly as being a huge hit in the year I met Rosemarie (1987) when it was used to advertise her favourite scent (Chanel No 5). Each of the jazz concerts – and there are two more to come – is offered with a three course meal (with three choices at each stage) at an all-in price.
Our dinner was enjoyed by a five strong group. Between us we had almost all of what was available from the kitchen. For me, this meant a starter of curried parsnip soup – simple perfection – followed by a whole grilled Bibury trout so large I called it Jaws, with buttered baby gem lettuce and a side order of buttered spinach (£4.75), and to finish a pudding (a rare treat for me) of pear tart with vanilla ice cream.
Rosemarie went for the chicken liver parfait, always so excellent here, followed by sticky, slow-roasted beef from the Gee’s owner Jeremy Mogford’s Rofford farm, and a gooey chocolate brownie with clotted cream.
Other members of the group helped provide a complete survey of this uniformly excellent menu with the spiced pepper stuffed with aubergines, courgettes and spices, artichoke gnocchi and whiskey marmalade steamed pudding.
We drank my favourite Picpoul de Pinet ‘Preamble’, Coteaux du Languedoc, and Cotes–du-Rhone Villages, Domaine de la Vidaliere 2009 (both £26.95).
Jazz fans should note the regular performances at the Mogford restaurants: on Sunday at Quod in the High Street (5-7pm) and Gee’s (8-9.45pm) and on Wednesday (6.30-8.30pm) at the Old Parsonage, Banbury Road.
Oxford Times 15 March 2012
Guest reviews
- an amazing experience
My boyfriend and I visited Gee’s on an early Summer Sunday evening in May. The only word I can use to describe our entire experience is amazing – the food, the service, the ambiance.
Every Sunday evening during the Summer the restaurant offer live Jazz music whilst you eat. With the late evening sun shining lightly through the glass of the conservatory, the atmosphere could not have been better.
The food was incredible, and if you go for the Jazz menu, very reasonably priced. This is a definite must-do for a summer evening in Oxford.
reviewed September 2011
- a great Sunday lunch – excellent service
We had the set lunch on Sunday for six people with a wide age range. Two of us arrived early and were well look after while we waited for the others, the best “Virgin Mary” for a long time. A very nice room. Lunch was excellent and well served, good bread, the basket was refilled without asking. A fair price for this standard. Well worth a visit.
reviewed August 2011