Back in the first half of the nineties, when I was a student at Oxford, there was a famous restaurant down the Cowley Road called the Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House. What made it famous, back then, was an urban myth that the menu didn’t have prices: instead, you paid what the proprietor decided you could afford. How he assessed that wasn’t entirely clear, but even though in those days I was constantly unkempt and dressed in easily the shittest clothes M&S and River Island had to offer I never felt like taking my chances, in case the meal turned out to be beyond my means.
Besides, as a student from a comprehensive school eating out in Oxford was pretty much always beyond my means. Instead I ate awful food served up by the college in halls, I nuked an occasional M&S ready meal – usually chilli con carne – in the microwave in the tiny kitchen in my college stairwell and, on high days and holidays, wandered to the chippy on Carfax for a life-affirming cod and chips. If we’d had a yearbook, which we didn’t, nobody would have nominated me as Most Likely To Write A Restaurant Blog.
No, eating out was for the trustafarians I was forced to rub shoulders with, where mummy and daddy owned half of Hampshire. Parents were always swooping in to take them to dinner at Gee’s, or the Old Parsonage, or Browns, back before Browns became just another Mitchell & Butler atrocity. I think my dad visited me once in three years and we had dim sum at a place called the Opium Den. This is fancy, I thought, and the experience was never repeated. It’s a Nando’s, now.
My fellow students, by and large an alien species, all lived down the Cowley Road in their second year in shared houses, cosplaying This Life, a few years before it hit the television. They fancied themselves as the Young Ones, even though they already had their dead eyes on careers as management consultants. They probably felt they were being postmodern, playing at being skint like they were playing at being part of the real world. And now, depressingly, many of them run the country, or run the civil service, or read the news on television. I wonder if any of them went to the Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House, back in the day.
Anyway, the Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House is closed now, or at least appears to be from a quick bit of online research. It certainly looked decidedly closed when I visited Oxford a few weekends ago with a lunchtime reservation at Spiced Roots, a much more happening, upmarket and highly regarded Caribbean restaurant two doors down from where Hi-Lo used to be. When I reviewed the Magdalen Arms, the same end of town, last year I asked whether anybody had Oxford recommendations for me. A reader mentioned Spiced Roots then, so I looked it up and the idea stuck in my head.
And this was my first chance to review it in 2023. It was my first visit to Oxford since last Christmas, and I’d forgotten how much I loved the place: having coffee at the Missing Bean; sloping off on a house envy tour of Jericho and north Oxford (it was harder to find a house you didn’t envy, really); stopping in the Covered Market to discover that Tap Social had opened a lovely little pub there; having post-Tap Social beer at Teardrop Bar because it was the original and best and otherwise I’d have felt disloyal; and buying all sorts of wonderful stuff from the Oxford Cheese Company, hoping it wouldn’t be too whiffy on the train home at the end of the day.
Speaking of trains, one of life’s great mysteries is that a return ticket to London or Swindon from Reading costs you thirty quid for half an hour on the train, whereas Oxford is closer to a tenner for the same length of journey. One day someone will fix that discrepancy and we’ll all be screwed, but until then Oxford is about as good a day out from Reading by public transport as you could possibly hope for. I should review more restaurants in Oxford, really – it’s crazy that this is only my second – and maybe I will. Besides, since Chef Stevie’s Caribbean Kitchen closed last summer I’ve been missing really good Caribbean food: if Spiced Roots could deliver, it would be well worth the occasional trip.
Spiced Roots’ interior is that old favourite, a long thin dining room, and a compact one too that can’t have much more than twenty covers. We arrived for a late lunch, at two pm, and the place was nicely full by then, with a table of about a dozen people having a fantastic time. The mural on the wall reminded me somewhat of Reading’s Flavour Of Mauritius, but the real conversation point was the bar, done up beach hut style with a straw roof and sporting a mind-bogglingly huge range of rums.
I found myself wondering if the evening was when this place really came into its own; Spiced Roots is only open for lunch on Saturdays, and even then it closes between lunch and dinner, so there’s only so much fun you can have. And that’s a particular shame because the cocktail menu was a small but wickedly diverting one. I had a dark ‘n’ stormy, tall and full of pep, probably the nicest I’ve ever tried. Zoë had a negroni made with Appleton 12 instead of gin, infused somehow with pimento smoke: I tried a sip and it provoked its own cocktail, a healthy mixture of trepidation and admiration.
The menu was simple, just the right size and written, all lower case, in that typewriter font used almost exclusively by dullards on their Instagram stories nowadays. It inspired confidence, with just five starters and eight mains, and pricing was gentle: three of the starters cost less than a fiver, none topped seven pounds. Only a couple of mains approached twenty quid, the remainder were closer to fifteen. Forget the old Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House approach of working out what you could afford – this was definitely affordable. We ordered three of the starters to share and a couple of mains, sat back, sipped our cocktails and felt all sense of hurry vanish.
That might have been just as well, because there was a bit of a wait. Our server came over and apologised, saying that there was only one of them in the kitchen. And that was of course fair enough, and that big table, all needing to be fed at the same time, would put a strain on a small outfit. But we were in no real rush so the cocktails passed, as they do, and we chatted about Oxford, I probably blethered on about the old days, and we sipped our water, mindful of all that pre-lunch beer.
I wonder what the me of thirty years ago would say if you told him that on the other side of the century he would still be coming to this city, with money this time, having made his peace with all the things it did and didn’t do for him. He would probably be waiting for me to shut up so he could go have another row with his girlfriend or listen to the new Leonard Cohen album, or pretend to study, or – almost certainly his favourite pastime – mope. But I wish I could tell him that it would all be okay, that one day he’d evolve beyond M&S microwaveable chilli and eating cookie dough straight from the tub. I’d also tell him not to take his knees for granted, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
Our first starter was a little delight. I had missed out on jerk chicken as a main course, what with always giving my dining companion first dibs, but the jerk chicken spring rolls gave me an early indication of what I was missing. Two little cigarillos of filo pastry, packed with chicken and served on a smear of dark, fruity, savoury sauce they were simultaneously lovely and nowhere near enough. I suppose that’s what all starters, ultimately, are aiming for. I’d have liked more, or for them to be heftier, but the clue was in the pricing and for just shy of a fiver it was difficult to complain. We should just have ordered two portions, that’s all.
Even better, and genuinely delicious, was something called “trini doubles”. This is a Trinidadian speciality, curried chickpeas on a pair of baras, flat fried dough not entirely unlike a roti, and a quick scuttle to confer with Professor Wikipedia suggests that this dish, created in the Thirties, might be a Caribbean take on the Indian chole bhatura. Be that as it may, this was a gorgeous dish – floury, warm and comforting, and a forkful of the chickpeas folded into the starchy, slightly stodgy embrace of the bara was reason enough to be in Spiced Roots. That a little sweet, zingy, almost caramelised courgette, in the finest strips, was heaped on top just made me love the dish more. Again, this cost less than a fiver.
Last but not least, we’d also decided to try the grilled octopus superfood salad. It was perfectly pleasant – what octopus there was was nicely cooked, the salad was well dressed and the pineapple on top added good contrast. The menu described it as pineapple chow, which is apparently spiced and enhanced with garlic and hot sauce, but I just got sweetness, really. This dish was nice enough: subdued, well behaved but not earth shattering. But that’s my fault, I suspect, for ordering something described as a “superfood salad”, not theirs.
After waiting a little longer than I’d have chosen for our starters, the pendulum of iffy timing swung in the other direction: with that large table having finished their food our mains were brought out quick smart, barely ten minutes after we’d finished the previous course. Just one of those things, really, and I imagine they were trying to ensure we’d have time for dessert before they closed at half three. In any event we were on to a second drink by now, in my case a New Zealand sauvignon blanc which was decent but heftily marked up and in Zoë’s a lager called Banks from Barbados which I’m guessing tasted like most lagers.
My main course was a good illustration of Spiced Roots’ strengths and weaknesses, almost emblematic of the restaurant as a whole. I’d chosen the curry goat, my second choice of main, and it was a really superb dish. Probably the best goat I can remember eating (and I include Clay’s goat curry in that) beautifully spiced – with fifteen spices, if the menu is to be believed – in a thin, dark and potent sauce. There were a couple of chunks of potato but otherwise it was pretty much all sticky, tender goat.
And yet the presentation was needlessly prissy. The curry was in a little vessel, the steamed rice in a separate bowl, there were a few random slices of plantain on the side and a salad which genuinely didn’t go and I’m not sure anyone eats. Were you meant to spoon the curry onto the rice, or gradually cross the streams while keeping the salad safe from harm? I ended up dumping the rice on the plate, pouring the curry on top and thinking that, rather than all the compartmentalisation, all I really wanted was a big steaming bowl of rice with plenty of curry on top – something earthy, hearty and unpretentious. I know Spiced Roots billed itself as fine Caribbean cuisine, but I don’t think that means you have to put obstacles between the food and the diners enjoying it.
Zoë’s jerk chicken, if anything an even better dish, suffered the same problems. The chicken was really outstanding, you got a huge amount of it and it was smothered with a rich, brooding sauce. And the rice and peas were good, too – a much more suitable companion than the plain steamed rice that had accompanied the curry. But again, it would have been better to let the food speak for itself without the faff of serving it on a slate, with more of that salad and a cherry tomato artfully cut into a flower. It made me think of the simplicity of somewhere like Chef Stevie. This food looks beautiful because it is beautiful, it doesn’t need to be gussied up in this way.
But even with that moaning, this lot for sixteen pounds fifty was hard to argue with. We also ordered a side of macaroni pie (which the menu, again trying to be more fancy, calls mac and cheese) which was really lovely but probably not quite big enough to share. As it only cost four pounds I think that was more our mistake than theirs.
Service was excellent, and suitably apologetic about the delays getting us our starters, which really wasn’t a problem. But pacing overall was problematic: I almost felt like they were trying to make up for the slow starters by rushing the mains, even though that wasn’t really what we wanted. We weren’t moved enough by the dessert menu to go for the full three courses, and a latte was calling to me from neighbouring Peloton Espresso, so we grabbed the bill and ambled off to caffeinate. Our meal came to just over eighty-five pounds, not including service, which I thought was thoroughly decent value.
Sometimes, believe it or not, it’s the act of writing a review that crystallises how I feel about a restaurant. Sometimes I know the rating in my head and work back from there, and sometimes it’s the process of running through the highs and lows that makes me realise, on balance, what I really thought. I don’t always get that right, I’m sure, so occasionally as a reader you probably get to the end and think the rating doesn’t match the text. You might not be alone in that – sometimes I feel that way too – but when there’s a real mismatch it’s because I’ve found it hard to work out what I think.
And Spiced Roots, I think, is one of those cases. I loved the food, but there’s a certain disconnect at the heart of the restaurant which meant I couldn’t quite make up my mind about it. The value is excellent, in places, but the presentation didn’t match that or the style of food – which meant that, for instance, some of the starters were just too slender (although unarguably priced to match) and that the mains, where they needed to be hearty and unpretentious, felt a little too dolled up.
And I think that also showed in the clientele, which was varied – some were from the Caribbean community and clearly enjoying the fantastic food, others were the same kind of diners you’d find in Arbequina, a couple of doors down, very much gastronomic tourists – like me and Zoë, in fairness. Overall I wasn’t sure what Spiced Roots wanted to be, authentic or rarefied, and as a result I wasn’t convinced it managed entirely to be either, let alone both.
So I loved the food, and if it sounds like your kind of thing you should definitely try it, but as a restaurant it left me slightly puzzled. Maybe a Saturday lunchtime – the only day it opens for lunch – isn’t the best time to judge it, so perhaps you have to be there of an evening, attacking that cocktail menu with gusto. But it was awfully well behaved in a way I wasn’t expecting and wasn’t sure about. That might tell you more about me than the restaurant. It did make me wonder, too, what a night in the Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House would have been like, at the height of its powers. It might well have cost me more than my meal at Spiced Roots did, but I suspect it could have had the soul and verve that Spiced Roots, for all its excellent qualities, slightly missed.
Spiced Roots – 8.0
64 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JB
01865 249888
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