Branca
Oxford, Oxfordshire
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Walton Street is abuzz night and day, and this up-tempo brasserie has long been attuned to the local demographic. Lunching workers from nearby Oxford University Press give way to academics hosting guest speakers for dinner, along with locals from exquisitely desirable Jericho. Large parties are common (see the separate buffet and party set menus). There’s ample space here, with a bar (modern art, a chandelier and picture windows looking on to the street), a dining area (bare brick walls and parquet flooring), function rooms, a garden terrace at the back and now a daytime café/deli next door. Project Branca is set to expand still further in 2023 with the opening of five 'townhouse' bedrooms. The menu, while short on thrills, does its job well enough, with Italian cooking to the fore – including a choice of four pizzas and a couple of pastas. Breezy staff plonk focaccia and olive oil/balsamic onto every table as an introduction. Maybe start with an intensely flavoured little bowl of fish soup, harbouring various forms of marine life: squid rings, chunks of white fish and a hefty king prawn. Salads, though, make a more impressive opening: try a sizeable helping of crumbed (and fried) full-flavoured goat's cheese with beetroot, roasted red peppers and mixed leaves. Impressively proportioned, too, was a moist mound of smoked haddock risotto, topped with a perfectly poached egg (though only scanty strands of the advertised spinach). Straying south of Italy, a juicy lamb kebab was lifted further by impressively fresh flatbread, a sparky mint sauce and fresh mint leaves amid a red cabbage slaw. Best dish of the evening at inspection, though, was a lemon tart of rare delicacy: a brûléed top over a zesty, light filling; the accompanying crème fraîche was barely needed. To drink, the decent Sicilian house white is backed up by a pertinent selection of Old and New World choices, plus Italian 'stickies', nearly all available by the glass.
