The News Café

This is a nice, clean, bright café, with decent, reasonably-priced food and prompt, polite staff. The decor is a bit Parisian without the grime and the surfaces have a pleasing, practical Scandanavian sparkliness. It can get a bit crowded at lunch time, but the tables are sufficiently far apart to feel that you're eating in your own space.

The range on the menu is about right: there's a variety of things (panini, steak, organic burgers, cod fillet, salads with things in) to suit most demands, but not so much stuff that you feel they're spreading their attention too thinly. And there are two or three specials. The drinks include smoothies and pressés and freshly squeezed orange juice, at the kind of prices that reassure you they are using real fruit (£2 - £3 for a generous glass).

We had the soup of the day, which was a light, appetising parmesan and zucchini, and went extremely well with the garlic bread (attractively golden triangles of crisply toasted ciabatta: rich, aromatic and crunchy). We also had a dish of bacon and cheese topped potato quarters, which was rustic and bad for us and altogether satisfactory.

The staff were instantly there to clean the table we snatched as another couple rose from it, but didn't hover around asking us "if everything was OK". They just turned up when we wanted them, like good-tempered genies.

Lunch for two was £20.40 altogether - that could easily go up to £30 with dessert and more than one drink each, but we felt perfectly well-fed with what we had. It compares very favourably with the uncaring franchises and swish bars in the centre. I will definitely be going back.

Minnie the Muncher (Unverified), 21/03/08

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The News Café sells itself on just that: news. Come in and browse a range of magazines and newspapers over a coffee or an orange juice, maybe stay for lunch and chat with friends about the many events going on in Oxford, all advertised on the walls. Watch tv for a while. Seductive offer. The reality is this: you are never quite comfortable enough to linger long. The tables are closely packed, the café is always crowded, mostly by people there for the food rather than the ambience. You will have to wait for a seat and rather than relaxing, the atmosphere is usually frottish. This is News as in bustling newsroom and rolling headlines, rather than easy-like-Sunday morning lounging about with all the papers.

But when it comes to it, the food is very good, if a little expensive. For £5.90, you can get a panini served with some of the best chunky chips around. Their tomato soup has actually seen a tomato (unlike many of the local lunchstops serving heinz' best) and the bread that comes with it is tasty on its own. The salads are a great idea - choose from a selection of 'tops' and 'bottoms', so you can get a mushroom, baby spinach and watercress base with chargrilled chicken on top, or a bell pepper, tomato and cucumber base with goats cheese croutons. The downside is that these are a little pricey at £7.80 a go, which, although you get huge portions, will always seem scandalous for a salad. The nutella and banana bagels are gooey, sickly sweet and vital, the juice is freshly squeezed, coffee's not bad and the magazines are all the most recent editions, if you choose to ignore the pressure to vacate tables and browse for a while. They also do a selection of hot dishes from £7.90, anything from salmon with lime and coriander to sausages, onion rings and mash.

While it does stay open til 9pm and serves wine, it's not somewhere I would ever choose to go for a romantic evening out. Go, have an indulgent lunch, sample the Cake of the Day, but find somewhere else for dinner.

Abby Chicken (Unverified), 06/07/03

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