Sccye's Qype profile

One of the common problems of an evening out - especially in a smaller city like Oxford - has been finding a quick dinner. Whilst at lunch-time sandwich shops abound, come around 6:00pm all that’s left are the Kebab vans slowly awakening from their diurnal slumber and the cornmarket trio of grease-merchants (KFC, Burger King and McDonald’s).

And this is when the Mission becomes a wonderful, wonderful place to be after a long day at work or in the library. The food is cheap, hot, plentiful and delicious.

On offer are burritos with a range of fillings - peppers, onions, chicken, steak, pork and black / pinto beans. There’s also sour cream, limes, cheese and what is reputedly excellent Guacamole (My lady is something of a pedant for good guacamole and has more experience than I in such matters. I trust her judgement on these things.).

Each of these are extremely tasty together, but the salsas are what really bring them alive. With three salsas of varying heat, the hottest of which doesn’t sacrifice flavour for spice. Which is something of a rare and extremely pleasing phenomena for me. A mixture of the three can create some interesting results!

The service is blindingly fast - you can be out the door in about 10 minutes even if there’s a cue out onto the street! The staff are all lovely as well, so even though things are extremely quick it doesn’t have the same depressingly frantic atmosphere of other 'fast-food’ places.

The true mark of the Mission’s brilliance is that despite having a relatively simple menu, the food never becomes monotonous. If anything, it gets better each time and’ll always have you coming back again. And again. And again.

Having been there once, it was moderately tasty but extremely unexciting.

The curry was as generic as it can possibly get - the sauces were relatively 'nice’ but had very little to make me want to say what or why. If you wanted an archetypal example of a mediocre modern curry-house, Jaipure would be it. Nicely presented in a minimalist, modern chique way - everything looks very sleek. Such seems to be the 21st century paradigm for curry-houses (Compare with the other newcomer to the Cowley Road, Majliss. Very similar interior design principles) - replacing the stereotypical miasma of painful 'exotic’ artwork, statues of tigers and hideous background muzak.

But whilst the paradigm of the stereotypical curry-house has changed in appearance, the food remains in the same vein: unexciting and oh so predictable. Granted, there’s always the aspect of knowing approximately what a dish will taste like, the balance of flavours, consistency and spice and so on - but there’s an excitement in how each chef will cook it in his or her own particular way. When you pick up on that, a dish becomes something unique and with an identity of its own. Food at restaurants like Jaipur seems to have come from a central stock of mediocrity which isn’t unpleasant, but resembles a high-quality ready meal rather than something you’d go out to eat.

They also committed the cardinal sin of 'meat-put-into-pre-made-sauce’, wherein the meat itself is flavourless and merely heated through in the curry, so the blandness of the actual flesh offsets any actual flavour of the sauces - which were notably quite pleasant. Chutneys does much the same thing, and it’s always very disappointing.

So, Jaipur isn’t 'bad’, per se. But there’s nothing special about it. And when there’s 6 other restaurants nearby, that’s a very sad thing. I suspect many will disagree and take a shine to it, as we all do to a particular place sometimes, but for me there was nothing to distinguish it from anywhere else.

Next, please.

Cheap, solid fare. It’s nothing fancy, is often crammed with students on the piss (The reviewer that called it the Jamal’s of the Cowley road is certainly right in that respect - only Kashmir actually serves curry rather than microwaved slop!), but the food is actually of a surprisingly high quality. The decor is non-descript and just a little ugly, so not the best place for a romantic evening, but the portions are generous and it’s generally very tasty. The staff, as I remember, have been very accomodating and polite.

Negatively, the take-aways I’ve had have been hideously greasy and oily, but that’s never been the case when I’ve eaten in.

I’ve had some very pleasant experiences here and would recommend it to anyone looking for somewhere unpretentious and cheap.

The Aziz is, all things considered, the best quality of Indian food available on the Cowley Road. And considering the quality of the competition, this is no small feat. Multiple Award winning and successful enough as a brand to have a beautiful Sister-Restaurant by the River up the other end of town, it’s reputation is well-deserved.

There are a number of factors that contribute to my love of their food, the most important one being the distinctiveness of each dish. At the majority of curry houses down the Cowley Road, each place that I’ve been to tends toward the Anglicised end of the curry spectrum - that is, heavy and rich sauces, generally very sweet and lacking in complexity of flavour (Note the difference between spice and heat!). An anglicised curry is by no means a bad thing, but for someone that grew up eating curry in Southall (Which is essentially home-cooked Indian food) the standard touristy curry-house fare is notably less exciting. The Aziz strikes me as the kind of food quite reminiscent of the more authentic curries - although it combines Anglicisation in a way that complements subtlty of flavour rather than diminishing it to a bland stodge of what’s ultimately sweet yoghurt with incidental bits of meat or vegetable in it.

In more specific terms, the variety on offer in the menu is particularly impressive - with a wide range of house specialties and more traditional dishes as well as some excellent vegetarian options. In particular, the Kaliyah Murgh is a favourite of mine - and they can do a decent Keema Naan, which is always a major plus. One thing which is especially noteworthy is their excellent selection of desserts - both Indian and English. Given the scarcity of Indian sweets down the Cowley road, finding a full menu of them was something of a delight (Although I can’t speak for their quality, not yet having had the time or money to try them!).

The decour manages to be rich without having the cheap, faux-luxury of a generic curry house. There are all the usual hallmarks - opulent-looking furniature, the odd 'exotic’ plant, Indian pictures, ceiling fans and the rest, but it all manages to all come together to present a very fancy interior without straying over into being either cheesy or pretentious.

This all said, however, the service is where the Aziz can fall down. I say can, because it’s variable. The staff are very polite, but can often be slow to take orders or notice if you need to ask something of them. In one instance, I was with my fiance and wanting the desert menu, but it took the best part of 20 minutes to get a waiter to bring one over, despite having asked several times. Likewise, the bill took a fair time to come. However, it really does depend on when you’re there. On a busy evening, the staff are generally more stressed and things can get done (quite considerably) less quickly if you’re unlucky. If you pop in for lunch or a take-away however, things are remarkably better.

On occasion as well, the odd thing will go wrong in the kitchen - a Tarka Daal we once ordered was a little burnt in some places, but was still extremely pleasant otherwise.

As for prices, it’s a little more expensive than some places (the Kashmir, Dil Dunia and Majliss spring to mind) but only by a few pounds per head. A typical curry is £7-9, a starter £4, and breads / rice £2-3. The extra money is more than worth it for the comparative increase in quality, however! That said, if you’re feeling a pinch on your purse strings, then there’s a 15% discount on take-away - and Kebabish is just down the road (They have a Tandoor. In which they cook enormous fresh naan-breads. Which are about £1.20 each.). Ideally, order food at the Aziz, nip to Kebabish and grab some breads, then go back and pick-up your food. You can easily get enough food for an evening for about £6-£8 a head.

The Aziz is far from perfect. The hit-or-miss aspect of going will put some off and if you’re in a hurry, the service can frustrate on a bad evening. But, on balance, the quality of the food remains sufficiently good to far outweigh and potential negatives. All in all, it remains solidly the best curry in Oxford by no small gap.