Le Chene Rosé 2011 – 90% Cinsault, 10% Grenache Rosé
Beautiful pink colour – charming structure raspberries & strawberries from the Cinsault.

Le Chene Blanc 2011 – 70% Syrah, 30% Grenache
Elegance, spice and dark berries from the Syrah, warmth & red fruit from the Grenache

I am sure you will appreciate all of the effort that was put in on your behalf and that you enjoy these wines as much as we do. Thank you to the Vintner www.thevintner.com

Tom Ross

We’re always interested to know what you, our customers, feel about our hotels and restaurants. Your feedback sometimes comes in the form of an email, a review on Tripadvisor or even simply a brief word with one of our managers. With the seemingly unstoppable growth of social media in our daily lives, we have recently launched separate Twitter accounts for each our properties to enable you to send us brief messages, recommendations or simply to follow what we are doing day to day.

These new accounts are:
@OldBankHotel
@QuodBrasserie
@OldParsonageOx
@GeesRestaurant

For a chance to win an overnight stay at either the Old Bank or the Old Parsonage with breakfast, please follow us on any – or all – of the above accounts AND tweet one of the accounts with the following message #My-choice-in-Oxford. The first 50 responses will be entered into the draw which will take place on 1st June. In addition, we will follow back all new followers. So get tweeting and good luck!

The Jeremy Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing 2013 (for £7,500) will be awarded at next year’s Oxford Literary Festival for the best short story on the theme of food and drink.

Food and drink has to be at the heart of the tale. The story could, for instance, be fiction or fact about a chance meeting over a drink, a life-changing conversation over dinner, or a relationship explored through food or drink. It could be crime or intrigue; in fact, any subject you like as long as it involves food and/or drink in some way.

The panel of judges will include Jeremy Mogford, owner of the Old Parsonage and Old Bank hotels and Gee’s restaurant, Donald Sloan, co-founder and chair of Oxford Gastronomica and head of the Oxford School of Hospitality Management at Oxford Brookes University, and Pru Leith, the celebrated food writer and novelist.

Applicants are invited from anywhere in the world and can be published or as yet unpublished. The story should be up to 2500 words and must be written in English.

Established in association with Oxford Gastronomica, the prize is sponsored by Jeremy Mogford, proprietor of the Old Parsonage, the Old Bank Hotel, Quod and Gee’s.

For full entry details visit the oxford literary festival website.

Quod, Gee’s and the Old Parsonage all have new spring menus.

Michael Wright at Quod has a new exciting streamlined menu layout and many of the dishes have been changed to include spring like ingredients such as asparagus, peas and broad beans… in addition, he has introduced to some of the dishes, crisp pancetta, lobster, prawns and even mango (ok not very local and seasonal but delicious with lobster anyway)! Our home-grown Rofford lamb is plentiful, so we now have a variety of ways of serving all the cuts which will change almost daily according to the mood. This Poll Dorset breed is packed full of flavour and incredibly tender. Hurry, hurry while stocks last!

Alicia Storey and her relatively new team at the Old Parsonage have created a smaller menu this time so that they are able to offer many more specials which are becoming firm favourites with our growing band of regular customers. For instance, on the menu you will find a lobster and saffron tart starter, the freshest lemon sole from our new supplier from Brixham with white sprouting broccoli and chocolate melt with honeycomb ice cream. Other dishes returning by popular demand include ‘var’ salmon from Severn and Wye and of course Rofford Rack of lamb for two, and plenty of locally supplied asparagus, goose and duck eggs.

The new menu at Gee’s has a distinctly Southern Mediterranean flavour with grilled asparagus with parmesan, artichokes with broad beans and mint, sardines with lemon and olives proving popular as starters. For a main course you could try scallops, tomatoes, capers and thyme, grilled pigeon with fennel and rocket or beetroots with cress and curd. Still have room? Panna cotta with rhubarb or chocolate nemesis are worth a detour.

Unfortunately, wild garlic is almost over, along with the special blood oranges from Spain. Now we await British new season girolles and St George mushrooms. April showers (down pour!) will help these along!

Julian O’Neill

Built in 1913-14 to connect two parts of Hertford College, the ornate flying arch bridge near the junction of Catte Street and New College Lane is known locally as ‘the Bridge of Sighs’ after a more famous namesake in Venice.

Fortunately that’s where the similarities end. The seventeenth-century Ponte dei Sospiri by Antonio Contino linked the Doge’s palace to prisons on the other side of the Rio di Palazzo canal. According to the English romantic poet Lord Byron (1788 -1824) hapless convicts sighed as were led across it, stealing a last look at the beauties of Venice before being taken to their cells – hence the ‘bridge of sighs’.

Most students in Oxford prefer a different legend: That to “kiss under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset means that love will last forever”.

Hertford College itself dates from 1874 although parts of the site incorporate much older buildings. Former students include the author Evelyn Waugh (1903 –1966). Hertford bridge was built by Sir Thomas Jackson (1835-1924), one of the most distinguished architects of his generation. He was also responsible for the Examination schools, and major projects at Brasenose and Trinity Colleges.

Footnote. The Old Bank Hotel and Old Parsonage Hotel have just taken delivery of 24 bicycles and hope to get the gondlas next year!

Attenders of ‘ Divas of Jazz and Soul’ were treated to three nights of exceptional jazz. Chris Gray wrote about the Polly Gibbons concert in the Oxford Times – “my kind of jazz… well done Polly… excellent menu..” Read the full account here.

30 May

Atila

Atila promises an evening that combines an extraordinary voice with great showmanship. With a range and sense of pitch that is impeccable, Atila is repeatedly likened to Frank Sinatra in the days when he was irresistible to women. One of Britain’s most exciting swing singers who appears regularly at Pizza Express (Dean Street) and Ronnie Scott’s jazz club.

“I was knocked out by Atila. He has the voice and the class to show the world what great music is all about.”
Buddy Greco.

Ticket includes three course dinner £37.50
(excl. 12.5% service charge)

27 June

Niamh McNally

Enormously talented Belfast born singer Niamh McNally is considered one of the very finest voices on the London scene. Renowned for her soulful singing, she is also versatile – at home with soul, R n B, jazz ballads and swinging Rat pack numbers. Niamh writes her own material and performs as international backing vocalist to the stars.

“One of the finest vocalists I’ve ever worked with… if not THE finest!” Gilbert O’Sullivan

Ticket includes three course dinner £37.50
(excl. 12.5% service charge)

18 July

Natalie Williams

Back by popular demand from her sell out performance three months ago, Natalie Williams, the darling of Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, returns to Oxford. Her material will be as eclectic as ever and ranges from heavy soul and funk to the most delicate of jazz ballads.

“The moment she starts to sing she becomes a commanding, strutting presence, scatting with an infectious relish.” Daily Telegraph

Ticket includes three course dinner £42.50
(excl. 12.5% service charge)

To book tickets please telephone Gee’s on 01865 553540.
For menus please click here.

Weekly jazz continues as usual every Sunday at Quod (5 – 7pm) & Gee’s
(8.00 – 9.45pm) & Wednesdays at the Old Parsonage (6.30 – 8.30pm).

Just arrived on the menu at the Old Parsonage dishes include Rack of lamb for two, broad bean bubble & squeak & sauteed wild garlic red wine jus 45.00; Lamb chops with fondant potatoes & sprouting broccoli 19.95.

At Gee’s on Sundays Gee’s there is ‘Rofford Farm’ lamb, roast potatoes & sprouting broccoli 19.95 or an ongoing special of Lamb chops, mint hollandaise, Jersey Royals & spring greens.

At Quod expect slow roasted leg of ‘Rofford Farm’ lamb, roast potatoes, purple sprouting & minted carrots 15.95, following that Char-grilled lamb chops with peas, carrots & broad beans.

Rofford Farm is situated eight miles from Oxford in the heart of South Oxfordshire’s rolling lowlands. Made up of water meadows and woods it is ideal for producing high quality livestock. The farm also supplies our restaurants with pure Aberdeen Angus beef and Oxford Sandy and Black pork.

The farm has been developed over the years by our farm manager who singlehandedly cares for the stock and produces the winter feed of hay and silage. Simon adopts all the true free range principles for the production of our meat which importantly gives complete traceability from birth to the time it becomes one of the ingredients of our dishes!

Please view our full a la carte menus at the Old Parsonage, Gee’s & Quod.

To win two tickets to this concert which includes a 3 course dinner and coffee please answer the following;

Which one of these divas sang a song called ‘I want a little sugar in my bowl?’

Please send your answer to louise@mogford.co.uk

The winner will be the first correct entry drawn at random.

As always, wherever possible, we think about seasonality of ingredients and are inspired by the produce of Rofford Farm. There are dishes utilising the first English rhubarb, local Bibury trout, our own carp, new season blood oranges from Andalucia (ok, they are not local but so redolent of this time of year!). Some dishes to look out for at Quod are; salt cod brandade, blood orange and chicories, the Old Parsonage; crab cakes with aioli, veal tongue with sauce gribiche, slow roasted Rofford beef, artichoke hearts with mushroom duxelle, Gee’s; organic salmon with a chive cream sauce, apple, fennel and radish salad, brochette of calf’s liver and kidneys, our home made pastas and a refreshing apple and calvados sorbet.

We’ve decided to be more adventurous with some of our puddings! One is made from a new chocolate from Spain… choco-vite with salted caramel or at Quod you will find Michael Wright’s new roast pineapple with mango sorbet really refreshing and exotic.

Please let us know what you think of these changes and now you can even follow us on Twitter!

Julian O’Neill

In the 1860s it was often visited by a young academic at Christ Church College, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll.

According to legend he was inspired to incorporate some of the creatures he saw in the museum into his most famous novels ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and its sequel ‘Through the Looking Glass’.

As he suffered from an acute stammer Do-do-Dodgson seems to have been particularly fond of the Dodo, a large flightless bird from Madagascar which became extinct in the nineteenth-century. An exhibition case in the main hall is devoted to the story of this ill-fated bird.

For other visitors the star attractions include an impressive collection of dinosaur remains, including an Iguanodon and a replica head of a Tyrannosaurus in full cry.

Which makes one think.

What would have happened if Charles Dodgson had preferred a T-Rex to a Dodo? In ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ the Dodo proposes a race where the runners can start and stop whenever they like, guaranteeing that everyone is a winner. Somehow we have the feeling that a rampaging Tyrannosaurus would not have been so sweet-natured!

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History is in Parks Road, Oxford. It is open 10am – 5pm every day; admission is free.

Roger Rosewell