I seem to be getting busier and busier (so in demand obviously, or just desperately clinging to my social life, you decide). But I was very keen to try out the new George Street Social that’s opened in (unsurprisingly) George street. So I managed to squeeze in a visit between social and professional engagements. ‘Welcome to the ‘edgiest’ place in Oxford. Your own piece of Shoreditch in Oxford. We have board games. We have book swaps. We even have an old pay stub system for giving out allergy information. We are the hippest place out there. Come to us vintage living students of Oxford, we are the place you want to be.’ Is what this place is screaming, except it just doesn’t live up to the hype.

‘Let’s give this place the benefit of the doubt, it is its first week.’ Is what I thought for the first 5mins I waited to be given a table whilst I watched the waitress clear and set up 5 empty tables and ignore the steady queue of people blocking the stairs. When I got my table after 15 minutes I thought ‘maybe it isn’t style over substance, maybe the food will make up for the irritating ‘we serve water in milk bottles from a beer pump’ and the ‘we serve our wine in tumblers so that it’s lukewarm and tastes worse’. I’m ranting, but seriously most self respecting humans who drink wine in a restaurant for ridiculous mark ups expect to be served something with a little more finesse than your average student party. I suppose I should be thankful it wasn’t a plastic cup. I could’ve forgiven them if the wine had been a) any good or b) chilled, but as it is , I felt like I was drinking grape juice with a mild fermentation from sitting out on the counter too long. I know I complain about over chilled wines killing the flavour but this is ridiculous. 

  Their menu is a little confusing as well…. There is a different menu in the window, at the table and at the main bar downstairs. I felt slightly like they might have been able to make better use of their resources and I wouldn’t have felt quite so much of an inconvenience as a guest to the staff, if they’d stuck to one menu with perhaps a few sandwiches on offer to ‘grab and go’ downstairs. If I’d have known pizza was an option, as it is downstairs, I would’ve gone for it. Instead , skipping over the rather overdone and dull ‘brunch eggs’ options as I’d had eggs that morning, I went for pretty much the only other choice; a salad plate. I’m not quite sure why it took so long for my waiter to run downstairs and grab a plate of salad FROM THE DOWNSTAIRS cafe (this is how backward this place is with its menus) but I’m giving the benefit of the doubt as I was not the only customer  and presumably they were planning on cooking and presenting other clients lunches better. 

  As it was I was served with a mildly depressing selection of salads, lumped limply on the plate with about as much care as I take when throwing dirty clothes in the laundry basket. Again I could’ve forgiven them if the panzenella had been vibrant with plump fresh, juicy tomatoes with a zingy dressing and oodles of chunks of  crunchy yet soft pieces of bread instead of what appeared to be just mushy tomatoes with 1 crouton in and a slice of onion for good measure. Or maybe the salad which appeared to be just beetroot and Orange, had been roasted faintly caramelised beetroot with a hint of acidity, from the market around the corner rather than something which seemed oddly like pieces of vacuum packed beetroot from Sainsburys, artfully chopped up. (Disclaimer, I have no proof this is the case and may very well be wrong, it is merely a metaphor). I was hoping the couscous might’ve been its saving grace bursting with raisins or nuts or to be honest anything other than the offering I was given, dry flavourless and I believe from Ainsley Harriot’s new from a packet range. (Disclaimer, again, no proof.) All in all I wish I’d been less English about the situation and complained and refused to pay the £9.50 they charge for the salad. Or argued my point as I did to the man in the pub who claimed the dishwasher salt I drank at the bottom of my wine glass was ‘crystallised sugar’. One glass maybe ? But both the my Riesling and my friend’s wildly different Sauvignon blanc, I don’t think so. I take after my mother (a law tutor) and as Marshall Eriksson would say from HIMYM, Lawyered. 

All in all I am disappointed Geroge street social. Take a lesson from the Turl street Kitchen or to be honest, any other restaurant. Never try to hard and never go for style over substance. On the other hand this is new, I’ll come back in a few weeks to see if it was all teething problems, I’m always optimistic. But  scathingly I’m not sure how long George street social will last.