Project Collegelicious Launched!

You know it. It is the ubiquitous Oxonian conversation topic and no, it ain’t politics. It is even more Oxbridge than that. It is hall food.

So the question which has troubled many generations of Oxford students is this: where will you find the best formal hall in Oxford? Some colleges boast stained glass portraits of Alice in Wonderland, other complement Sunday dinners with a sung grace, yet others offer free wine, and some ... some of them even serve good food.

We are certainly not the only people in Oxford who would like to know which colleges offer the best formal halls. Yet, there is no comprehensive and coherent source of information on the topic. That is why we have decided to start Collegelicious.

On this blog, we would like to provide reviews of all, or at least the majority, of formal halls taking place weekly at the Oxford colleges. Our rules are simple.

1. We visit one formal hall each week of a term.
2. We visit the most formal dinner taking place at the given college every week.
3. We sit in the general hall, not at the high table (even if there is one).
4. One of us orders the vegetarian option (if available).
5. We award 0-5 stars in each sub-category and then obtain the category rating by averaging the number of stars awarded in each sub-category. If we are unable to evaluate a certain sub-category, it is excluded from the calculation.

We will stay incognito during the reviews in order to prevent lobbying or even upright corruption by college representatives, for we know how hard it is to say no to an extra crème brûlée. Let us just say that we are international (to make sure that Oxford halls can actually cater to tastebuds other than those brought up on cuisine where a potato with canned fish already qualifies itself as a respectable lunch) graduate students from St John’s, Somerville and Lincoln.

Since the oldest colleges take their fame from bearing witness to numerous decades and centuries, we decided to explore whether the years of tradition extend to maintaing their hall menu in good medieval spirit too (porridge three times a day), much like their gargoyles.

So it is that this term we are starting with the eight oldest colleges. For those less knowledgeable in history, these are University, Balliol, Merton (relax, these three are listed in no particular order!), Exeter, Oriel, Queen’s, New and Lincoln. If you want to know where to invite your family while it is visiting Oxford, or where to try to get invited yourself by your friends from other colleges, follow us closely.

We started at Lincoln in Week 1 of Michaelmas and we’ll soon be posting our full review. In short, we weren’t particularly impressed...