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Gee’s restaurant, housed in an elegant Victorian conservatory on the Banbury Road in North Oxford has, over the last twenty years become something of an Oxford institution. Oxford students aspire to celebrate their graduation here in style and with locals and visitors it has become a necessary pit stop to sample the wonderful brasserie food in a stylish and contemporary setting. Part of the Mogford group and owned by Jeremy Mogford, Gee’s houses an amazing collection of Gary Hume artwork, worth a visit alone!
My husband and I often visit Gee’s and always enjoy their Sunday evening jazz supper and the warm and friendly atmosphere the staff here create so well. When we arrived on a slightly gloomy Monday evening recently we were greeted by amiable General Manager Laura Cottrell who announced with great enthusiasm that the new autumn menu had arrived. It was 6.30pm and the restaurant was just over half full, their early supper menu obviously proves very popular we noted.
Laura talked us through the new menu and wine list, crab and shellfish flown in from Jersey weekly, meat and vegetables from the owner’s Oxfordshire farm, complete trust in their suppliers to provide them with consistently great products is what they rely on she told us proudly. We ordered a bottle of Berry Brothers Ordinary White, a strange name to give your house wine ‘ordinary’ but Laura explained that Berry Brothers had a reputation where ordinary means extraordinarily good and it was!
To start I ordered the soufflé Suisse and my husband the baked cep and onion tart, both were exemplary. Main courses arrived in the form of bourride of red mullet, brill and salt cod and roast partridge with bread sauce and game chips. The bourride was a classic delicious creamy fish stew with generous chunks of fish, fennel, aioli, parsley, boiled potatoes and croutons served piping hot in a le creuset pot. The partridge was perfection, cooked through but still pink with brussel sprouts, game chips, watercress, roast chestnuts and chipolatas, drizzled with its roasting juices and served with a bowl of superb bread sauce. For me traditional accompaniments are crucial with game and my partridge really was ‘properly garnished’.
Pudding arrived after time enough to talk to Laura about the Jazz coming up the following month and hearing all about their popular Sunday lunch menu, the more we talked the more we realised that Gee’s really is all things to all people, offering a unique setting with a menu and wine list that really do deliver and prove value for money. Lemon syllabub and winter rhubarb ice cream arrived at the table with little shortbread biscuits and ended the meal perfectly. We’ll be back, we concluded, very soon………….
Reviewed By Caroline Raven
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