I hate Valentine’s Day, I really do. I loathe it with the kind of passion normally reserved for and 9am lectures and Simon Cowell. When you’re single it’s bad enough, sitting at home watching all the annoyingly smug couples through the window, holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes, whispering sweet platitudes. But it’s worse when you’re in a relationship, and your girlfriend, previously intelligent and independent-minded suddenly falls into the same commercially-induced madness as the rest of society and starts ‘subtly’ demanding roses, chocolates and dinner for two at a pretentious French restaurant. I have seriously considered dumping several girlfriends in early February just to avoid the whole thing. Waiters hate Valentine’s Day too. A good restaurant is normally a lively, cheerful place, with groups of happy friends laughing and chatting, colleagues discussing a proposal, a bevy of pensioners on their weekly lunch outing, a couple of students arguing over whether they can afford pudding. A relaxed, diverse group of customers will almost always provide a good atmosphere. But on Valentine’s Day that all disappears. The cheerful groups of friends are replaced by uniform rows of tables for two, by couples alternately simpering and awkward, murmuring under their breath, desperately wishing for the bill to arrive so they can finally escape. Half of them are nervous teenagers trying desperately to impress their girls, talking too loudly and being rude to waiters. The other half are longtime marrieds on their sole night out of the year, sitting in the silence that comes when, after long decades together, there finally arrives the realisation that there’s simply nothing left to say.
Still, though, needs must. If you’re going out for dinner this Valentine’s Day it’s probably because you don’t have a choice, and so this column will endeavour to make it as painless an experience as possible. The first rule is go to a restaurant, not a pub. If you take your girlfriend (and forgive me for assuming you’re a man in a heterosexual relationship, but it makes the writing easier, and if I’m forced to write ‘girlfriend/boyfriend/non-gender-specific OUSU-approved life partner’ this will end up sounding like the OxStu) to a pub for dinner then, frankly, you deserve to be dumped, in public and with copious amounts of beer-throwing. Yes, I know they have gastropubs now, but really, lager and pinball machines don’t create quite the right atmosphere.
Assuming you’re manning up and going to a proper restaurant, the obvious one is Pierre Victoire in Little Clarendon Street – smartly-dressed waiters, rickety wooden tables, oysters aplenty, a decent and not extortionate wine list, and a pleasant, inoffensive menu of French classics. But it’s full, so you can’t. Al-Andalus next door, which I reviewed a few weeks ago, is probably a good alternative if posh French is a bit too much of a cliché, and offers more scope for sharing dishes, which is far sexier than moodily picking at your own plate, looking enviously at whatever your partner’s got (because the first iron rule of eating out is that you always end up wanting whatever your companion’s got, unless your companion is having tripe, in which case all you want is a bucket). If you’re at LMH, Anne’s or Hughes, or you’re willing to pay for a short taxi ride, the Cherwell Boathouse, (a converted boathouse on the banks of the river Cherwell, not, unfortunately, this newspaper’s very own punthouse) takes the food, the service, and most importantly the wine list up a notch, but the price goes in the same direction. Brasserie Blanc on Walton Street has good food but a fairly tepid atmosphere, Gee’s we discussed last week, Quod is full of travelling sales reps in cheap suits, the Old Parsonage is reassuringly expensive but you’ll be the youngest people there by about half a century, Ask, Giraffe, or almost anything else on George Street just says you cheap and unimaginative. Jamie’s Italian is superb, but I guarantee all the waiters are better looking than you, and it’s therefore a slightly risky choice. If you’re feeling flush there’s le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons just outside Oxford, but it’ll cost you a term’s rent, and you really have to ask yourself whether any girl is worth the price of a week’s skiing.
Wherever you go, book now. Actually, book last week, because, in the gastronomic desert that is the city of Oxford, all the half-decent places fill up at the beginning of February. And then go, grit your teeth, and be grateful that it’s over for another year.
