The Ox, Corn Street

The Ox,
The Basement, 43 Corn Street, Bristol, BS1 1HT
http://theoxbristol.com/

Just before Christmas, Twitter was alight with talk of Ox. It was enough to pique my interest and so I booked a table to take advantage of the early dining offer. It took me two goes to book a table, another sign of the buzz surrounding the place.

The restaurant is tucked under the commercial rooms on Corn Street and you just wouldn't have known it was there unless you were looking for it. You travel down the marble stairs and enter a dark, cosy restaurant which if a jazz singer popped up and started serenading you it wouldn't be a surprise. The restaurant is run by the same team behind Milk Thistle and Hyde & Co. and you can certainly see elements of that in the décor.

The early deal is a 6oz Rump steak from the charcoal oven, fries, sauce & a glass of house wine only £12.50 and is served from 5pm to 7pm. The restaurant was buzzy and you could tell things were still bedding in as service was a little slow - I think the high demand so soon after opening left the team with a few holes to fill in terms of number of staff needed to provide optimum service. However our server was lovely, bright, bubbly and helpful.

The steak and fries arrived and Oh! My!

We were seated with friends and between us order a variety of steak finishes from rare to medium. Mine was the medium and was perfect, although smaller than the other steaks on the table :(

The chips were not fries but fat chunky doorstep chips which I loved. The others on the table were not as pleased as they were expecting skinny fries. We debated about the pros and cons of each type of fried potato and it seems from reading other reviews the same conversation has ensued for others.

The wine was lovely and the peppercorn and béarnaise sauces a treat!

For £12.50 it is exceptional.

We also visited Ox in January for a friends birthday and as we were a table of 14, we were directed at the Party Menu. It's £35 per head and consists of a variety of small plates, followed by a choice of main and dessert.

The sharing starter was delicious; the stand out dishes being the salt cod and the lentil salad.
I chose the rib eye steak for my main; it was okay. I believe the 6oz rump steak in the early dining offer to be a better choice. To finish I had the caramelised rice pudding with Yorkshire rhubarb and lemon curd which after a little mix-up over toppings was divine. The lemon and the rhubarb were so good together.

The service was improved, perhaps the gap between visits was enough for the team to work out the optimum staffing levels.

The final bill was a little steep when you combine £35/head with the excellent wine list, but a good night was had by all. My one recommendation would be to include a cocktail list with the menus, as when you are cousins with the best speakeasy in Bristol it would make sense to showcase that. The cocktails that we did try were superb as you would expect.

Ox is a great addition to the Bristol Restaurant scene and I can't wait to try the roast dinners. I would recommend this without hesitation.

Update - October 31st 2014

We went to Ox again last night and took advantage of the early dining offer. I'm not sure what has happened at Ox but it was not up to the usual standard. Slow service to start but I think that was because we were placed at the invisible table. I'm sure we've all been there. That one table in the restaurant which is ignored, simply because when you're scanning a restaurant to see who needs attending too, you tend to not see what is in front of you or a table slightly outside of your field of vision. That in itself was no a problem, as eventually we were attended too and some extra artisan bread and butter made its way onto the table as an apology.

We ordered the early dining special and asked for the glass of wine included in the deal to be boosted to a bottle. This was no problem. Our plates were delivered and instead of the wonderful triple cooked chips which we have enjoyed previously we were presented with some thin skin on fries which looked like frozen chips akin to what is normally served alongside a burger. The steaks were perfectly cooked as normal, it was good to see that element of the meal was still as expected. My steak did have a thick band of fat round one side, but this was ok as it was easily cut off.  The béarnaise sauce was lovely but the peppercorn was very thin and portion wise seemed a little depleted.

I was so disappointed with the meal and I expressed my concern for the standard of food Ox were serving to the Maitre D. I told him that part of what makes Ox great IS the early dining deal which allows you to experience a fantastic steak dinner for a reduced price in return for an earlier dining slot. I do not expect to be served a different meal especially when the Maitre D said it was a cost issue in the kitchen. The Maitre D asked me if it was just the chips which had ruined my meal and I said it was as it affected the meal as a whole. Great steak deserves great chips! I expressed how amazing the early dining deal was and how it was such a luxurious experience for such little money. By changing the chips to some frozen generic chips was cheapening the whole experience and I can't understand why you would change the cheapest part of the meal (potatoes) for the sake of surely only a few pence of margin for the coffers. I told the Maitre D that prior to that meal I recommended Ox to everyone I knew and raved about the early dining deal but I wouldn't be doing that anymore. He was grateful I'd flagged my disappointment and he would feed it back to the kitchen and I'm sure hope he does as I would like to return to one of my favourite restaurants in Bristol and enjoy the best early evening eating deal the city has to offer. We were offered a digestif as a way of an apology which was gratefully received but does little to change my opinion on the meal.

Since writing this review, Ox have apologized via email and have offered a full explanation for the change in menu offering. It was great of them to get in touch personally. They had this to say about the chips:
"Since changing, we have had such positive feedback on the chip option we feel confident that the change has not cheapened our offering. However we are aware we cannot please everyone of our guests as personal tastes vary so much that we happily will serve the triple cooked chips when asked (and I'm sorry to say we do charge a little extra for these too).
It is also quite a common misconception that the chips are the cheapest part of the meal to cook, this is not the case. It takes well over 24hrs to process from start to finish and each can very massively from one batch to the next which again requires serious skill in how they are cooked to keep the chip in the very best of eating condition. This is a huge daily job to monitor with the shear volume of triple cooked chips consumed on a daily basis."