During the three hazy years that I was living on and off in Oxford, I frequented what is now known as No1 Folly Bridge four times. Each time it was a very different experience. The venue has ranged from Bangladeshi curry house to Lebanese belly dancing club. Over the years it has changed faces more often and more ruthlessly than my sister changes outfits.
Currently back in Oxford for the Christmas period, my French girlfriend and I were taking a wintry walk down to the river where we intended to do romantic things like play pooh sticks and try to steal a punt. Once again, I found I couldn't resist the allure of this picturesque waterfront spot, whatever shape it might now have taken.
As soon as I walked through the heavy wooden doors, the refined and elegant brasserie that I was confronted with seemed as though it had never been anything but. In its current guise, No1 Folly Bridge seems to have found an outfit that is a perfect fit, and, hopefully, one of more lasting quality.
The Venue
On entering the restaurant one is greeted in the corridor by a pristine, old gramaphone on an antique, wooden book chest. The stylish bar that one comes to next is, in contrast, modern and mostly comprising of dark, shining metal surfaces.
After glancing around the rest of the spacious, open-planned restaurant, one picks up on other similar juxtapositions in the decor. The floor is covered with dark, grey-blue tiling while the walls are a bright and breezy sky blue. The window frames are brilliantly white. The tables and chairs are mostly a lightly varnished oak and the seating is quirkily mismatched without making the place look like a jumbled second-hand furniture shop.
Outside on the water, the wooden pontoon is lined with canal boats and ornate, black, metal lamp posts preside over sharp, white canvas chairs and light grey tables. The whole place shows an easy synchronicity between old and new, between comfort and class.
Perhaps most important to that end is that, unlike many brasseries these days, No 1 Folly Bridge is not trying too hard to be something it is not. It is neither too modern and soulless nor too rustic and nostalgic. It has found a happy medium. And that, for me, is exactly what a brasserie should feel like. Put simply, it is newer, posher and more chic than a pub like Head of the River across the way but without the minimalistic, sterile and stark pretentiousness of a lot of Londonesque fine dining establishments. Its the kind of place you can have a 'proper' meal, but still wear your flip flops.
On the nigh of our visit, a Friday, the place was fully-booked and the clientelle ranged from Oxford students having big and rowdy Christmas parties to quiet old couples in tweed. There were families with young children too. None seemed out of place.
The Menu
Whilst some restaurants in similarly great locations might be tempted to push their prices through the roof or serve below par food (or both) on the assumption that punters would be too distracted by the view to notice, No 1 Folly Bridge's food remains reasonably priced and its portions sizeable enough for good post-meal belly patting. The starters and puddings are around £6. The mains are mostly between £10 and £14.
The Moules Mariniere are highly recommended as a starter. My girlfriend and I shared some and they did not disappoint. The sauce was simple, plentiful and happily boozy without being headache-inducingly rich. The mussels are also available, in good old Belgian fashion, as a main course with chips.
Having been joined by some friends, we also shared some assorted olives and humus with croutons, both of which were a decent size for the price.
For a main course I ate Swordfish served with a potato fondant, pak choi and a rich and creamy mustard sauce. The swordfish was beautifully cooked and the slight sourness of the mustard balanced the sweet flesh of the fish.
Amongst our group there was also a grilled Sea Bass with seafood risotto and a mussel sauce, grilled salmon with dauphinoise potatoes and green beans and a sturdy sirloin steak with fat cut chips, grilled tomato and a watercress salad.
The pick of the bunch was the Sea bass. Its skin was nicely crisped while the flesh was soft and moist. The side of seafood risotto and mussel sauce was an interesting change from the potatoes of some variety that one would usually expect to find with Seabass. The salmon was not bad and perfectly cooked but failed to wow (I should say that I find salmon overrated generally). The steak, ordered medium rare, was veering dangerously towards medium. the French chef perhaps overly-zealous in trying to suit our uncultured British taste buds and aware of our general distrust of blood on our plates.
With a top bottle of French plonk and some mojitos already thrown into the bargain, I was feeling considerably plumper than on arrival and my eyes were growing heavy. Nevertheless, I decided to stretch my dad's "there's always room for pudding" theory to the limit and ordered, erronously, the raspberry pavlova for pudding. The meringue was so big it could have killed someone if hit on the back of the head with it from ten paces. I finished it all and only partially regretted it.
The Overall Experience
Like the menu and the head chef, most of the waiters and managers are reassuringly French. They are all quietly friendly and efficient and, being French, there are none of those cringeworthy moments when the waiter can't pronounce half of the stuff on the menu and I have to restrain my French girlfriend from verbally berating the poor so and so for destroying the French language.
Overall, my girlfriend, like me, was very happy with her time at No 1 Folly Bridge. It is interesting to note here that she and I spent some time living together Paris and most of the meals we ate out there failed to meet my expectations. No 1 Folly Bridge far surpassed her's. In a strange paradox, having just eaten and drunk our way through an almost entirely French menu cooked by a French chef and served by a French waitress, she said as we left "I never realised that the food in England was so good".
Christopher Clark - Based in Cape Town, Christopher is an African History graduate specialising in travel reportage and African affairs
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