Joe's Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Oxford

Went for a late lunch with my mum & sister yesterday. Hadn't been to Joe's for years & suspected that it would be overpriced for what is it, a captive market of mostly students & tourists, sadly I was right...The service was fine, pleasant however we were not checked back on at anytime to ask about our food which is the heart of the issue. The portions are far too small for the price, and tasteless, cheap ingredients appear to be used or not the right ones. My mother had a veggie pasta dish for £15 that was small and flavourless. I had a similar one for £12.50 and both dishes were essentially the same. My sister had scrambled eggs on toast, eggs were cold & over buttered, toast wasn't toasted. Finally, I had a vanilla milkshake for dessert which was basically a glass of milk with a couple of drops of vanilla extract. I felt I might as well have gone across and bought a pint from Tescos & poured my own. I really feel that Joe's takes its customers for granted in terms of the quality of its food because no matter what the place is always full because there aren't many other places of its size to sit and eat in Summertown but we won't be going again sadly. Total price £57 including service to leave disappointed & we were very British not to complain at the time but when you are just hungry & want to have a catch up with family you don't want to have difficult conversations. I waited til after I'd thought about it to inform on...

Very poor service at Joe's last evening for our Xmas Meal. Staff were very frosty,almost rude on arrival. As some of us came an hour before the meal to chat over drinks. the staff did not like this.It was almost empty but they did not want us at the bar . Barman was negative. Meal was standard fair. When the pudding of cheese arrived it was the most miserable poorly presented plate we had seen. We had not realised that it was just cheddar, which was very clearly pointed out to us....it was for tiny triangles of very bland cheddar with 4 biscuits dumped on a plate....like a kids lunch box!!..Then the sour faced Waitress appeared and slammed a small plate down and said " there you have the whole shebag!!!!! Two small bits of Stilton and Goats cheese!! We all found this terrible customer service...She and the manager then stood at the bar looking at us all. . Such a shame as Joe's is(was) a pleasant place but the staff last night were awful. Other members of our party , had other issues with the bar staff and rudeness of the waitress. It was not at all busy in there, so you could not give cut them slack for being over worked. If they dont like customers. then perhaps a job change is required. Or some staff training in...

We were looking for a gentle breakfast café experience, and the decor here promises that. The service was alright, though we arrived early and noticed that people who came in after us had to stand up and wave to the waiter to get his attention. As for the food, we have eaten much better in less pretentious cafés. The soft poached eggs on toast were hard, the kedgeree had far too much cream and was a sweet stodgy mass, and the pork sausage was undercooked; so for us it was one-star food experience. In case anyone at Joe's Grill chooses to suggest that we should have raised any of this at the time, I'll save you time: we did, in the form of a suggestion that pork sausages should be cooked properly, rather than as a complaint, and our suggestion was treated with...