Author: Paul Southgate
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Mercure Oxford Eastgate Hotel: A Properly Oxford Place to Stay
Some hotels just get where they are. You know the sort: they don’t try to be something else, or to reinvent the wheel, or to pretend Oxford is in Dubai. The Mercure Oxford Eastgate is one of those rare spots that understands its brief perfectly: be Oxford, stay Oxford, breathe Oxford. And it does. You…
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The Talkhouse: Thank God This Pub Still Exists
Thank God places like this still exist. Honestly. Before I’d even parked the car, I could feel my blood pressure dropping. A thatched roof straight out of an Enid Blyton daydream, crooked old beams that probably remember the Civil War, an open fire crackling away as though it’s been waiting centuries just to toast your…
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King’s Arms Oxford: Everything a Pub Should Be
Yes yes yes. A great pub. Everything a pub should be. None of your distressed brick and faux industrial nonsense, no ironic lighting or Shoreditch wankery masquerading as “authenticity”. The King’s Arms is the real thing, the sort of pub that’s been around since God was a boy and still smells faintly of ale, wood…
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The Alice, Oxford: Proof That Some Restaurants Really Are Special
For those of you who read my restaurant reviews (and, truly, I adore your stamina), you’ll know that I often talk about restaurants trying to be special. The dim lighting, the overpriced cocktails with sprigs of rosemary the size of bonsai trees, the waiter who says “awesome” when you order water; all the theatre of…
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Queens Lane Coffee House – Probably Quite Old.
I love it when venues claim to be the biggest, the best, or my personal favourite the oldest. It’s such a gloriously unverifiable boast. No one’s really going to cross-reference parish records or trawl through 17th-century shipping manifests to check whether your “since 1654” claim is true. And even if they did, what are they…
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The Ivy Oxford Brasserie — “Nice” in every possible sense
The Ivy brand holds an interesting position in the British psyche. It’s the restaurant equivalent of saying someone’s lovely. Not brilliant, not exceptional, just… nice. It exists in the nice parts of nice towns, where nice people go for a nice meal. The décor is nice, the service is nice, and the food, well, it’s…
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L’Osteria, Bristol – A Masterclass in Mediocrity (With Extra Cheese)
Oh dear God, do these sorts of places still exist? Oh dear God, do these sorts of places still exist? Apparently so, tucked into Bristol like the last Blockbuster video store stubbornly pretending Netflix was just a fad. L’Osteria is that brand of chain Italian that feels less like dining out and more like being…
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Rudy’s: Proof That Being Good Beats Being Different
Right, so Rudy’s Pizza in Bristol. Another bloody pizza joint. Or a burger place. Those are the only two things that seem to open these days. You can’t move in a British city without tripping over an “artisan” sourdough base or a “dirty” triple-stacked beef thing. And I’m not going to stand here and make…
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Moxy Cologne Airport: The Airport Hotel That Forgot to Be Awful
Right, so here’s the thing: airport hotels should be crap. That is their function. They are not meant to be destinations, they are meant to be purgatory. They should exist in that peculiar hinterland of travel where you’ve left your home but not yet arrived anywhere, and so deserve a night in a building that…
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Rembrandt, Ruffs and Radioactive Bathrooms: A Business Stay at the Leonardo
Right, so I’ve just come back from a couple of days in Amsterdam, ostensibly on business, which, in my case, involves a laptop, an expense account, and the ability to identify a decent gin and tonic at twenty paces, and I was billeted at the Leonardo Hotel Amsterdam Rembrandtpark. From the outside it looks like…
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The Travel Critic 