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Disappointment of the week with trainman
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Detail Pages
Oxford Blue, Oxford
Oxford
OX4 1JU
Reviews (Current Rating Average: 5 of 10) see review guidelines
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Tris C left this review about Oxford Blue
This is a Victorian pub, which was originally known as the Swan Inn until the ‘80s and although I lived just two streets away from 1996 to 2000, the other day was my first visit.
The location isn’t great, but the pub is well presented externally, the name Charlie Wells advertising the brewer and where from the benches out front, you can see the Iffley Road Running Track, where on the 6th May 1954, Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. There’s now a bare brick with tubular steel shelving for the bar back, with industrial metal shades over the metal topped bar. The floor’s modern boarded, with a tiled bar apron. The walls are rag washed, as is the ceiling, which looks like a prisoner’s dirty protest; not nice. Furniture is largely traditional, with banquettes upholstered with tartan cloth, rear seating laid for dining. Décor comprises some trendy framed prints and pot plants, some quite large. There’s also an in-house large lurcher, roaming around pestering me; who would want to eat a meal here with a large dog sniffing their food? As for customers, there were just two other locals, though my visit was made mid-afternoon on a Tuesday.
As Quinno mentions, there were two casks for stillage, but now they have cooling jackets, though no indication as to contents. There were two unused pumps, then just DNA and Origin at a very pricey £2.60 a half, but not bad. However, this is the Iffley Road Triangle, not central Oxford and this is the price – or a lot less – than I’d expect to pay in central London.
This pub’s ok, in fact it’s probably the best in the immediate vicinity being away from the prying eyes of students, but the pricing and enormous roaming hound are reasons why I won’t be returning.
On 28th May 2022
- rating: 4
[User has posted 1983 recommendations about 1949 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Komakino . left this review about Oxford Blue
Originally The Swan and The Oxford Blue for as long as I've been visiting the Cowley Road area, this has been re-decorated and re-opened again - now as part of Charles Wells' Pizza, Pots and Pints chain (see also The Radcliffe Arms in Hitchin and Old White Horse in Baldock amongst others). A garish, dark blue, dark red and cream colour scheme outside along with distressed and upcycled chic inside, including semi-exposed brick, corrugated iron, partly-ripped wallpaper and chairs of varying materials. Just Young's Bitter available from four pumps (the other three all turned around) and an 80s muzak soundtrack bubbling away in the background, which to be fair, was pretty good. This is one of a handful of "off Cowley Road" boozers clinging on and I wish them the best (the guy in charge admitted that this was the quietest pub of the chain).
On 27th August 2018
- rating: 6
[User has posted 1074 recommendations about 1074 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Quinno _ left this review about The Oxford Blue
Located just off the main road. Opened-out, horseshoe shaped interior. Bare boarded, mainly set for food on right side with drinking in the left. Rear patio garden. A mish-mash of seating including some old cinema seats in the drinking zone. Other items of interest included a large mounted stags head on the wall and a glass chessboard on my table. Velvet Underground on the speakers, better than the usual dross. Sign outside advertising free tapas with your drink and indeed I did get a little potato thingy as snack unannounced. Friendly barmaid though seemingly infused with the ghost of Frank Spencer - everything was going wrong (though not through much fault of her own I should add, and she was quite friendly). Four pumps but only one on (Hooky) and one on stillage at the bar (no sign of cooling so I skipped it, assuming it had been festering for the best part of a at least a day in the warm). My Hooky wasn’t much to write home about, tasted a bit odd. As a pub there’s not a huge amount to recommend given nearby competition. Still, the free tapas was nice.
On 6th May 2014
- rating: 5
[User has posted 5072 recommendations about 5055 pubs]