Ha
ving never been there before, I always associated the Ox with its famous ox burger and the crowds of drunken St Marks College students who stagger in and out of there on their pub night each Wednesday. The restaurant has a classy type of pub atmosphere (although with a bit too much music from Britney and Beyonce for the liking of some people), and a variety of options on the menu ranging from your typical pub meals to more fancy choices. Twenty dollars for a schnitty (and two dollars extra for sauces) was more than we expected to pay, but seemed worth it for a decent-sized pub schnitty.
When the meals were brought out, we were a bit surprised. Sitting on each of our plates was a massive salad, a huge pile of unique Ox-style chips (more on them later)… and somewhere underneath all that was a schnitzel. Surely the schnitty is supposed to be the centrepiece of the meal but, in this case, it was unimpressive in size and hidden under the chips and salad, as though the chef was ashamed for people to see it. Matt’s chicken schnitzel was little more than a glorified mcnugget, while by veal schnitzel was even less attractive – thin, dry, fairly bland, with a soggy crumb coating which was falling off the meat with every incision I made. “I would not call this a particularly good schnitzel”, commented all-round good bloke Jonathan Hamer, himself the disappointed owner of a chicken parmy (appropriately named, as it would have been able to fit on the palm of his hand). When my schnitzel arrived, my friend Ada looked at it with a mixture of scorn and pity on her face. Her own meal - a chicken and corn salad - looks, smells and apparently tastes fantastic. Indeed, every non-schnitty meal that I see seems to be of a very high standard.
On the bright side, the salad is very generous (I know, I’m clutching at straws here), and the ox chips are very much to my liking. Instead of being shaped like normal chips, the potatoes have been cut into thin, disc-shaped pieces before being fried. They’re very salty, and – in everybody’s opinion – a real winner.
The Verdict: This is a good place for a schnitty if you’re a healthy eater, as you get about five times as much salad as schnitzel. But in all honesty, I wouldn’t recommend the schnitzels from here to anybody. However, the chips were fantastic, and some of the classier options on the menu seemed to be very good. The restaurant is an ideal place for larger groups, and has quite a relaxed atmosphere. They just haven’t quite mastered the schnitty.
Taste: 3.5/5, Size: 2/5, Value: 1/5, Sides: 3/5, Dining Experience: 4/5
Overall: 54%
