EASTGATE BRASSERIE — Restaurant in Oxford

If the Marco Pierre Restaurant has closed, this is an outdated review. I have not been to this 'Keepers'.

It was my partner and I's 3 year anniversary, and as a last minute (ugh I know) booking, we decided to give this restaurant a go as its one of the last places we haven't been in Oxford.

What a great decision that was! I had put a request on the booking saying it was our anniversary and to place us as far away from kids (not a children person) and they put us in a gorgeous little corner of the room and put little candles and felt hearts on the table, absolutely lovely.

Our waitress was Vera was was so nice and wonderful to us. She was lovely and professional and chatty, but not too much to be over the top. The menu inside was slightly different to the one online but there was no hassle in getting the food that I had wanted.

Our food was outstanding and even for a Friday the wait times were quick and not at all awkward. What's even better is that there was a 20% discount that we didn't know about AND we had a dessert for free. Honestly you can't go wrong when someone goes above and beyond to help make memories. We'll always remember this restaurant and will endeavour to go to more branches in...

The keepers kitchen is a bee themed restaurant, and I can see why; it probably won't be around for very much longer.

We'd been asked us to preorder mains, which was handy because the staff were very busy dealing with the fact that there was no one else in the restaurant.

One of our orders was the salmon, initially I thought that they had brought out the salad first with the salmon yet to come, mmm... delicious salmon I thought, freshly cooked, tender and flaky; but alas, what I had initially thought to be a medium sized leaf, was, in fact, the purpley skin side of a very small piece of cold salmon. This cost £17.

The crockery is an eclectic mix, I can only assume sourced from a charity shop next door to a wetherspoons.

By all accounts some people did have nice food, I had the baked camembert to start, which, being melted cheese, was very nice; though the breadsticks served with it were that special type of stale that can only come with prolonged exposure to a complete disdain for the people eating...

I've got to admit I've never been so disappointed in a restaurant. The food was bland and dry and the the service was slow. We ordered spaghetti and the sauce was so bad it seemed to have physically adhered to the pasta and at some point in time become one entity. I don't think you really could have called it sauce any more. In addition the soup tasted so bland that cardboard would have been more palatable. We were also informed that some of the items weren't on menu because they hadn't 'ordered it in'; a testament to how 'fresh' this food is. If you enjoy thawed ready-meals, then this is the place for you. We should have realised as soon as we walked in the door, as the place had more staff than customers. Marco should be ashamed of putting his name to what is clearly a bad attempt at franchising. Either he had nothing to do with the menu or he stopped caring. I'm going to be avoiding anything with his name on in the future and I would advise you to...