After a slew of more ‘brinners’ (breakfasts for dinner) than anybody should ever eat, my second foray into the world of food — at The Cherwell Boat House — felt more than overdue.

Up there with the smartest high-end restaurants our modest city has on offer, this establishment challenges your illusions about food by pricking at your taste buds like an acupuncturist in ways that are both delightful and completely unexpected.

The restaurant is situated, as one might guess, by the gurgling river Cherwell. Enroute, one passes through trees bathed in the orange glow of streetlamps. Once past these, a sleek and modern restaurant emerges. In the restaurant, we are seated by the window through which one can see punts, skeletons of a quickly diminishing summer, rocking in the calm evening current. To mirror this, the menu is dubbed ‘Late Summer’. It has changed now, but the pricing is the same: One course costs £16.25, two courses cost £21.50 and three courses cost £26.75 with certain speciality items in each course costing extra. My companion Zoe and I have three courses each.

For the first course, Zoe has the artichoke crème caramel (£1.50 extra charge) and I have the tuna tartare (£4.25 extra charge). Both dishes arrive as perfect cylinders with the sort of presentation that emphasizes the fact that I am slightly out of my depth here. Her dish is great and mine is incredible. It is undeniably European, but the wasabi kick and the thickness of the tuna has an obvious Japanese influence.

Next come the mains. I have the steak with foie gras (£10 extra) and Zoe has the fillet of John Dory. The steak is not the best I have ever had but it is cooked nicely and the sides are wonderful; the foie gras sits on top of the steak and the peas decorate the plate below. There is an overwhelmingly smoky taste throughout, yet the chef avoids any hint of burning. Zoe’s fish is cooked perfectly and is bathed in a sauce with hints of orange zest.

Lastly, we come to the desserts, and I coose ‘Textures of Strawberry’ (£4.50 extra charge); strawberries presented in five different ways. My favourite of these is the macerated strawberry, which has strong ginger notes. I’d never considered putting ginger and strawberry together: two great flavours, but both fairly dominating. However, my taste buds are pleasantly surprised by how they blend and compliment each other for a tangy sweetness that clings on to the last few evenings of summer. Zoe has the chocolate marquise with cherry compote. The chocolate is coated with pistachios. The tartness of the cherries hits you hard on the tongue at first before melting into the bitter chocolate.

I talk to the manager, Briss, at the end of the meal. He tells me about the restaurant’s history, which spans half a century. The focus is traditional English, but with a strong French influence. This makes sense given that the Boat House prides itself on its wine selection, which has won several awards over the last few years.

The new chef believes in simple food with simple ingredients — I take this statement in my stride, pretending that the complexity of what I ate tonight didn’t blow my immature mind.

The final word is this; it is a stunning place. Yes, it is expensive but it leaves you feeling like you’ve truly learnt something about food.

Go here with your parents. Go here when you make your illustrious return to Oxford. It will probably outlast us all.

If I had a spirit animal, it would be Grumpy Cat. I am probably the grumpiest 93 year old woman living in a 20 year old’s body ever. However, when challenged, my partner in crime could not think of a single redeeming feature of this bar either. That sounds excessively cruel, but it’s true. 

Somerville bar was recently built in 2013 and is a modern add-on to the sinfully ugly Vaughan residential hall. Trying to get in without a Somerville access card would be nigh on impossible and we had to get through two sealed doors to actually get to the bar. The access card gives you a discount (as you get on hall food) and the prices are still very very high and it’s annoying trying to split cash when there’s an access card involved. The bar happens to be a café during the day and a bar at night, but they don’t serve hot food and the sandwiches in the glass presentation case looked pretty grim. They serve coffee,which was okay but since we were on Little Clarendon Street, I know I could have had one elsewhere.

The selection of beers, spirits and non-alcoholic drinks was impressive but my pint was quite dismal since it had no head. The bar staff were friendly but not particularly responsive, with one of the bar staff members actually just sitting on a stool listening to his iPod at one point. Unfortunately, the bar itself takes up a significant amount of space in the main part of the room so there is no space for booths. You have to sit on a bench-style sofa which is uncomfortable and makes it difficult to talk to a large group.

The acoustics are also appalling, given the glass roof, so chat is difficult. There’s a pool table but if you are a female and wish to use the bathroom you have to risk being hit in the face with a pool cue. Behind the pool table is a widescreen TV, although because of the way the sofas are organized it would be impossible to actually watch the game with a large group of people. According to my Somerville contact, no one actually ever watches the games in there and when I visited they seemed to be playing music videos on VIVA UK that was playing obnoxious noughties re-runs. It was fairly reminiscent of a school disco.

You can’t smoke ANYWHERE in Somerville, even outside, but to be honest, the Brutalist patio is not exactly enticing, and the views of concrete admin buildings aren’t fantastic either. The interior is also fairly lacking in ambiance, and the décor matches the colours of a Travelodge, making it feel a lot like an NHS waiting room.

This bar was not well thought through; given that there are a great many good pubs in Jericho, and lots of good cafes and bars on Little Clarendon Street (which are better value) I really cannot see the point of going to a bar with absolutely nothing going for it.

Verdict: â˜†â˜†â˜†â˜†â˜† (0/5)

Amidst the rest of your Freshers’ Week excitement, you will all have visited the Freshers’ Fair last week. You had to listen to the offerings of tons of student societies and clubs (if you were not lucky enough to run away from their stalls straight away). Maybe you signed your email — or someone else’s — up for a few of the many different activities crowded under the roof of Exam Schools. With everything going on in Oxford, how have you decided to spend your precious free time?

While many societies have a clear message about what they do, like a film society or a bell-ringing group, this is not always the case for charities. Objectives such as making a difference, volunteering and social change can seem too vague and hard to achieve. Yet at the Oxford Hub, we want to change this view. We connect you with student groups that share your ‘causes’ and interests, empowering you to have a positive social impact during your time at Oxford, enabling you to explore, and challenge, the social and environmental issues that are most important to you.

What is most special about Oxford Hub is that there is no common ‘hub type’. You don’t have to dream about working for a charity, or spending 20 years of your life in South America saving rain forests (though that would be great).

There is only one quality shared by those involved with the Hub, and that is being sensitive to, and aware of, what is happening around us. Just take a look around. Is it homelessness that makes you wish you could make a difference? Or educational inequality? Climate change? Don’t think that you have no power to have a positive social impact simply because you’re a student.

Our ‘Ethical Network’ consists of more than 40 groups working in many different fields, from environment and sustainability to human rights, international development and social entrepreneurship, providing op- portunities to learn about social action at the ‘front line’ and instigate meaningful change. Through volunteering, connecting with campaigns, providing training, and running events and conferences, we believe student-led action can and will make a difference.

Every week from today, the Hub will bring you student-thinking on a challenge we face as a society, via our blog on cherwell.org. Two of our current initiatives may have caught your attention: One Hour A Week, and The Ethical Guide To Oxford. The One Hour a Week campaign, which we’re running in collaboration with OUSU, aims to highlight that everyone has time to make a difference during their time at university.

We have a range of volunteering opportunities that can take up as little as one hour a week of your time. If every Oxford student gave just one hour a week of their time in term, that would be a total of over half a million volunteer hours over the year! Check out onehouraweek.co.uk to see what interests you.

Secondly, on Friday of 1st week (17th October), we are launching the first Ethical Guide to Oxford. The booklet consists of tips and ideas for living a more ethical student life and suggests many cafes, shops, restaurants, green spaces, entertainment venues and more that you may want to explore. You can find a copy of the guide online (via our website), in your JCRs, or by dropping into our HQ above the Turl Street Kitchen. Many of the great places in here are ones you might not stumble across in your daily march across Oxford, and we even cover places in East Oxford and Jericho so people liv- ing out are included too.

The work of the Oxford Hub is varied, interesting, fulfilling, and most importantly, fun. Our key message is that you don’t have to be a ‘charity person’ or tirelessly devoted to ethical causes to make a difference. From as little as one hour a week, you can have a real impact on an issue that you feel passionate about.

So, accept our challenge — take that one hour a week you spend mooching around on Face- book, putting off essay writing, or watching cat videos and use it to get involved. You may not know it before you start, but volunteering can be incredibly rewarding in terms of experience, relationships and skills.

Imagine a typical night at Bridge, just at that right time when everyone is too drunk to feel any restraint, but sober enough to resist the urge of curling up on the dance floor in a foetal position. Imagine that you’ve had your fair share of vodka cranberries, and the wave of sweaty bodies around you makes the old familiar itch return. You want sex, and you want it bad. But then you look around and no one catches your eye. They are all in a big boring LAD LAD LAD group, or trying to suck someone else’s face off, or they’re wearing too much Jack Wills. In short, the room is full of dicks, and not in a good way. Still, the smell of Lynx and Fosters is overpowering, and you know that one of these creatures will get way luckier than he deserves. Slowly, you even stop caring which one. Just at that moment a hand brushes your shoulder. You turn, and there he is: a red-trousered lad with traces of some unlucky girl’s lipgloss still around his mouth. He smirks, looks at you with piercing hatred and disdain, and walks away. And you follow, because the night just got interesting.

My friends, good right-thinking women, try to stop me. He is the resident asshole, and ain’t no girl got time for a guy who’s going to treat her like shit. But they don’t need to worry; I am not suddenly brain dead. He’s just my passive-aggressive warfare lover.

No, you don’t need to point out how weird that sounds. We hate each other, and the sex is a complicated military strategy, aiming to break down enemy defences. His ego wants him to be the best guy I’ve ever had and trust me, I don’t mind that kind of selfishness. Sarcasm and sex are the only languages we ever communicate in, and the liberty of it is the best kind of high. Oh, he doesn’t like the bra I’m wearing? Couldn’t care less. And I can abuse his stupid stripey boxers all I like. If I don’t like his moves, there’s no gentle suggestion or guidance. Touch me how I want it, or leave. For a while I can forget that I am generally a nice person, and all my meanest instincts come out to play. My inner bitch is here tonight, so love it or leave it. I am selfish, drunk, and free, and I could do that forever.

Until he starts insulting my book collection, that is. Then he’s kicked out of my college into the cold night, goodbye, see you never. The passion of hate sex aside, literature is a line one does not cross.