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Oxford's poshest Chinese restaurant. Delicious food in gorgeous, winding, dark oak-beamed Tudor venue hidden behind grubby looking black-and-white facade on Castle Street. Expensive but correspondingly tasty.
Can get busy. Booking recommended. |
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29 Castle Street Useful links: Oxford Restaurants Oxford Hotels Oxford Pubs & Bars Oxford Gig venues Oxford Concert venues Ads by Daily Info:
  
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Delicious, cheap, and authentic dim sum at Oxford's own little Chinatown! I love the fried turnip cake, the shanghai dumplings, the pea sprout and scallop dumplings, the XO sauce, and the glutinous pork rice wrapped in a lotus leaf. The staff is very attentive and constantly refills the tea pot and the bill is always far less than I thought it would be. Dim sum means 'touch the heart' in cantonese, and Liaison never fails to do so. Highly recommended!
23/09/08 A mixed bag, really. Brownie points first; my starter of baked Crab with Spring Onions and Ginger was fantastic, though not cheap at £12. My partner raved about the Dim Sum platter, and, upon sampling several, I have to admit they were very good (around £8, I think). However, our friend ordered the Garlic and Chili deep-fried baby Squid and personally I wasn’t impressed. The batter was a little too thick and the squid a far too chewy (it was also not, so far as I could make out, baby at all). I hold my hands up to being a perfectionist, particularly with food, and I may be being too harsh as she ate it all without complaint and it was relatively cheap at around £5. The wine was perfectly drinkable and reasonably priced and service was good, if a little over-attentive. My gripes really stem from the main courses, which were uniformly below par. I ordered the stir fried Chicken with Chili and Basil leaves, the Basil was non-existent and the chicken had that gut-wrenching reformed meat texture. Bad meat at these prices is not just unethical, it’s unacceptable. The Mushrooms in the stir fry were, however, delicious. My partner had the sizzling Beef – again, the meat was awful; tough and fatty, which is a combination that is tricky to achieve… Our friend ordered a King Prawn dish which came in the generic, lurid red, sickly sweet sauce that often frequents bad Chinese food. Not on. Mains all came in around the £7-10 range. The sides we ordered of Chinese Broccoli in Ginger and Egg Fried Rice were good, but not exceptional. The Broccoli was very greasy and came out with a big lump of butter on top which was really not necessary but the flavour of Ginger and Garlic was good. We opted out of dessert. Overall, disappointing and quite pricey for what it was. The starters were massively let down by the main courses; however, I can thoroughly recommend that Crab! Dr Mukti, 10/09/08 The Dim Sum at the Liasion is wonderful! Almost as good as the very best restaurants in London. Quite a find. MS, 10/02/08 I went to the restaurant last week with my son. It's quite a cosy place, very good service, wide choice on menu. My son ordered his crispy duck as he nearly always does. I ordered a prawn dish & a beef dish as I could not make up my mind. The beef was really lovely however the prawns were very poor. Totally tasteless, even to the point I would suggest they had gone off. I pointed out to the waitress as I paid merely to warn in case someone else had similar experience. I was told they were frozen prawns. Suggested they tried taste themselves next time before serving. There is a 10% service charge with the meals which I paid but I dont like this type of thing. Normally I tip £2 and this meal was £33 & I paid without grumble for something I stopped my son trying because of above worries. bsa, 08/12/07 As a dim sum fiend, I have to eat at Liaison to relieve my cravings. My authentic Hong Kong Chinese friend claims this place serves the best dim sum he's ever tasted in the UK. However, he's from Birmingham so he can't really talk. I, however, am from London where Chinese cuisine is probably at its peak. This place definitely does not sell the best dim sum in the UK, but it's an ok substitute. You can tell from the taste that the prawns aren't the freshest. But nevertheless, a reasonable price, and a necessity for anyone who's looking for a good selection of those oh-so-yummy Chinese dumplings. Oxford Student, 01/04/07 After having read other reviews of Liaison, and being Dim Sum fans, we were looking forward to trying out the "premier" Chinese Restaurant in Oxford, that so many other diners have raved about. I can honestly say, that it was the worst Dim Sum we have ever had, to the point that we couldn't finish what we had ordered. The steamed dishes were soggy which would have been absolutely fine if the contents had been ok. Instead they were packed with cheap, less than fresh ingrediants. The deep fried dishes again were made with cheap ingredients, and were very greasy. If you want to try authentic Dim Sum not too far from Oxford, then the Taipan in Milton Keynes is excellent, as is the Taipan in Liverpool if you're ever in the area. LC, 08/10/06 Hidden away on Castle Street, Liaison is a smallish, mid-priced Chinese restaurant with a cosy atmosphere and palatable food. The small size and popularity of the restaurant, combined with the relative closeness of the tables, made for a relaxed ambience, more conducive to a romantic dinner than a rugby-team night out. The service was efficient, but not excessively so, and the waiters were both friendly and courteous. My guest and I both had one of the three set menus, priced at £14.50, which included scallops, crispy duck with pancakes, special fried rice and 5 main dishes. For those bold enough to select their own dishes, the menu has a wide choice of à la carte dishes, spanning chicken, beef, pork, fish and vegetarian, all costing around £5/£6. The food was good, but perhaps not quite as refined as some of the more expensive oriental restaurants in town, such as Chiang Mai or The Peninsula. The scallops lost some of their taste because of an overzealous application of sauce in the kitchen; the crispy duck, which came finely shredded and ready-to-roll on a pancake, was - however - quite exquisite. The main dishes, which included sizzling beef, lemon chicken, lamb with spring onion, and a trio of seafood were all enjoyable, the beef and lamb particularly so. Portions for individual dishes were of average size, but their sheer numbers would satisfy even Gargantuan appetites. The house bottle of white (around £9) which we chose to accompany our meal was fruity but not overbearing, and is recommended by this reviewer. All in all, our meal at Liaison was an enjoyable experience, combining a fine atmosphere with good and reasonably priced food (total cost approx. £38). Daniel Sokol, 03/08/03
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