Gonna be real here, I do NOT understand the reviews at all.

Bf was craving a decent bbq place and all of Berkshire was lacking. So we decided to do an Oxford trip, he'd never been so we went to the Pitt Rivers, followed with an early dinner/late lunch here. When we walked in it was borderline dead.. Which fine, that's ok given the time. Also did not smell like BBQ which I always take as a sign that it's not going to be great.. Nothing like Bodeans in London, where the smell is part of the experience, which it should be for all good BBQs imo.

My bf went to order, he wanted a coke with his food, however they 'had no coke'. This is being told to him all whilst he can see the fridge, which is stocked with bottles of coke. We think this is because they only serve the watered down syrup/cheap cokes and not actually coke from a bottle/can. Then went to get some water, and all there was was a jug left on the counter, which, we don't know how long that's been there. It was room temperature which, for the height of summer, meant it was warm, and it tasted like the plastic jug it was in, as it had been sat there a while.

The lotus milkshake was top tier. But food arrived. The sausage was good, absolutely tiny, and there were only 2 of them, for the size in the sharing platter, there should be 4. Would happily sacrifice the boiled tasteless brisket for more sausages too, they were the only main good bit. The brisket tasted it had been boiled.. And was flavourless.. The burnt ends were sweet :/ (in my opinion a cheap way to do BBQ is to make everything sweet, however bf doesn't like sweet, he likes real BBQ'ed food with smokey flavour). It was cheap for the amount we got, but it wasn't great.. The corn on the cob had 0 butter, it was just lightly salt and peppered, versus buttery or even grilled or bbq'ed. Onion rings were also absolutely tasteless..

Very underwhelming experience, and the reviews do not add up. We will not be back and it was not worth the trip. We both expressed that if we'd have driven that far just for it we'd have been thoroughly disappointed, at least we had done the museums so it wasn't a wasted trip, but his craving hasn't gone away and we spent £50, to then eat McDonalds later.. Next time we'll just go to Bodeans in London, lesson learned!