Browns

Browns
5-11 Woodstock Rd
Oxford, OX2 6HA



Brown's a chain throughout England, and is one of the more upstanding establishments in Oxford, catering to the well heeled populance in search of cooling cocktails on a summer evening, and also the occasional student dressed in the Sunday best, rescued from the usual college gruel by a visiting parent. Not quite as old fuddy-duddy as the Old Parsonage, Browns nevertheless commands a relatively high position in Oxford cuisine, with a price tag to match.



Your intrepid reporter went for a leisurely Friday lunch with four friends in tow. Ordering was fairly swift, without the usual dithering about what to pick.



MH's chicken schnitzel with poached egg was fairly well received, although the chicken was somewhat dry - a recurring theme during the lunch. The egg was perfectly poached, and at just over a tenner, not a bad dish.



L's pappardelle with chicken was... well, dry. The pasta was nice with a tiny bit of bite, but the chicken pieces had been wrung of all juice.



E's chicken baguette arrived with brilliant frites, but was, again, dry. Not one to complain, E seemed content with the whole package.



It looks moist, but it didn't quite deliver.



Y-M's slow braised belly of pork came on a veritable mountain of mash - not to be attempted by the faint of stomach. This was the only dish to pass without negative comment.



Creamed spinach came smothered in fat. Not the most pleasant sight to behold, unless you're training for a heart attack.



The main quibble: my rack of lamb with potato dauphinoise: raw lamb and crunchy potato.



At first glance, it looks fine, although the lamb has been cut in a peculiar way, with uneven bones and somewhat ragged meat.



This is the serving before I had touched it: the ragged cut marks done the rack were performed in the kitchen. The piece to the left was twice as thick as the piece to the right, and the other pieces on the plate were equally irregular. I managed to eat the piece on the right, but the fatter piece on the left came out raw and cold inside, with only marginal grilling penetrating no more than a millimetre of the surface.



Doesn't that look like someone has had a go at my lunch already? So I send back the dish, as it was a thick round of totally raw lamb, and 25 minutes later - after my table had finished eating - I receive the following:



Mysteriously, my four two-bone 'racks' had turned into four very thin lamb chops. The photo doesn't adequately demonstrate how small and thin the pieces were. Upon asking our waiter, I was informed that these were the same pieces of lamb I had sent back (but obviously sans the piece I had cut open to reveal cold meat), reheated and served a second time. The manager came, and told me a contrary story: that on the first plate I had been given 'extra' as the pieces were rather small, and that this is the standard serving. Not a satisfactory answer by any stretch of the imagination.



As a compromise we were offered a free dessert, and the side dishes (chips, and creamed spinach) taken off the bill. L had the Pimms jelly, which although sounding interesting turned out to be a foul tasting blob of rubber. Real rubber would probably have tasted better.



I opted for a cheese board as my freebie, to share with the table.



Grapes with yellowing ends.



Wilting celery, and an extremely watery 'balsamic onion chutney' - that rather resembled bisto gravy gone wrong - were served with some severely under ripe cheeses.



The damage: Around £12-15 each for a main dish, with good service and abysmal food. I would not go back again, despite the gesture to remove some of the items from the bill.