Oxtoberfest

We have unfortunately not been to very many pubs while in Oxford, so Oxtoberfest, a four day charity pub crawl event, was a good excuse to go check out some of the places we always walk past and never go into. It also gave us a chance to see the English in their natural environment, slightly drunk but happy instead of the usual sober and sour. The challenge was a fairly short order: a pint from each participating pub and we would get a free t-shirt and brewery tour which I thought would be fantastic. The five participating pubs and our experience with each are below in the order we visited.

Although we have walked past this pub a thousand times, it wasn’t until last night that we had ever been to The Duke’s Cut. It is situated right next to a car park across the street from absolutely nothing and from the outside simply looks like any ordinary pub, but on the inside it felt like someone’s house complete with a big screen TV, couches, old piano, an older couple fondling each other opposite us and the other couple sitting down to a meal and exuberantly reading a newspaper and women’s junk magazines. We walked in at about 2pm, forked over some cash for our Oxtoberfest stuff and our first round of drinks to a very friendly barman, and sat and watched Australia beat New Zealand in rugby (an extremely close game). When we returned at the end of the night to collect our free shirts, it had turned into a stereotypical student bar complete with cheap beers and loud music, but for our early afternoon Oxtoberfest starting point we could not have picked a better place.

The next stop on our crawl was The Honey Pot. For some reason we had never heard of this pub before and it’s a shame because it is now our favourite watering hole. Situated stealthily just off of a busy street in Oxford, it is a building we always walk past but have never seen and has a properly English character about it, not in the historical Turf Tavern sense but the overall atmosphere and attitude of everyone. For starters, the people that work there are very friendly, even more so than the more friendly bars in Seattle. They appeared to all be university friends but I can’t say that for certain. We started out in the beer garden out back next to the BBQ but decided to move inside and be social and it worked: we met a friendly Scotsman who was working in Oxford as a games developer. Extremely friendly guy (we are seeing a pattern with talkative friendly Scots…) and told us about skiing in Scotland and good places to go visit. We also met a very strange old man who after only a few minutes of talking to us was telling us how difficult it was explaining to his then 80 year old father he was gay. Odd not because he was gay but rather because he was falling over drunk and had maybe only 2 or 3 teeth. Nice old chap though and somehow was able to guess that Julianne was Canadian. Everyone up to this point has always guessed American so we were quite shocked when he was able to pin-point Julianne’s accent. We were also given a quick beer lesson from a local startup brewer named Mattias Sjoberg of Compass brewery. He went through a brief overview of how beer is made and some specifics about English and continental brewing culture. If you can’t tell by the name, Mattias is from Sweden and has been home brewing since 15 so a brewery is a logical next step for him. I will probably write a separate blog entry on Mattias as he taught me a lot about English Ales and culture in the 20 minutes I got to chat with him after his pitch. Finally, the food; they served two items, burgers and chili. Both were brilliant. Julianne and I, since having had so many horrible experiences with English restaurants and pubs, have quite literally stopped eating out altogether unless we absolutely have to. It was by chance that they were bringing in a new batch of chili from the kitchen and it smelled incredible. Being impressed that their food did not come off of a truck we decided to stay and eat an early dinner. While quintessentially English, the food was a very pleasant surprise and gave us yet another reason to go back in the very near future.

Directly across the street was our next stop, The Jam Factory. This place isn’t really a pub, more like a gastro bar with a cool fully furnished alleyway. This being England the alley was not in use since the high today was about 10 degrees. Coming from The Honey Pot, The Jam Factory felt lacking in character, almost sterile. Everything from the ceiling to the floor, the chairs and tables, even the bar was completely spotless. Don’t get me wrong, clean is great but something felt missing. White chairs, white walls, white tables, white bar, all without spot or blemish. A great restaurant and posh bar but coming from The Honey Pot to here felt like climbing out of an old MG and into a Volkswagen. There is nothing wrong with the Volkswagen, it is more reliable, well respected, but it lacks that little something extra that makes the MG special. A thing that’s impossible to explain but can only be experienced. The food at The Jam Factory looked brilliant and we will probably head back soon for a meal, but for a pub we have to cross the street.

On the other side of the train station would be our next stop, The White House. This stop felt unfortunate since it really was the definition of a stereotypical modern English pub. For those unfamiliar with English pubs, there are actually two or three companies that supply the majority of pubs in England. Greene King is the most well known, and in Oxford Wetherspoon seems to be the other big one. This results in all of the food in Oxford coming from the same couple of trucks, tending to give all pubs an Applebees sort of feel. These pubs generally try really hard to be cool British pubs but end up being tacky through no fault of their own. To be fair, I don’t think the White House is part of the chained pubs, but it certainly had the atmosphere. It was clean, efficiently run, and overall a nice enough place on the restaurant side but the sports bar was a bit obnoxious. Walking in we were met by a dozen or so well oiled children yelling at the Man United vs. Tottenham match trying to relive their football years vicariously through millionaire drama queens. We left as soon as we could for our final stop of the night.

Oxford Retreat is a popular place next to Hythe Bridge. Very nice on the inside but again has a very chain feel to it, almost like The Keg in Seattle and Vancouver. There is simply nothing memorable about it and did not carry any of the local beers for the Oxtoberfest charity pub crawl. It only carried Fullers run of the mill beers and after forcing down an Old Speckled Hen we were out of there as soon as possible.

Although a bit expensive, we were delighted to have participated in the pub crawl because we got to see the better side of England. Our usual interactions with the English involve a lot of glaring and getting knocked off the pavement into oncoming traffic and because of that we were quickly becoming disenchanted with England. But being in their element allowed us to experience the English from a slightly more positive perspective. We also got to meet some extremely friendly Scottish people and two guys who guessed Julianne was from Canada which we thought was very impressive. Overall a fun night and a culturally educational experience, well worth the price of admission.