Opening a restaurant in Gloucester Green is a brave move. There is food everywhere. The food market, permanent stalls and other restaurants just a few steps away makes it a competitive place. Noodles, dumplings, curries, burgers, falafel—you could probably eat lunch there every day for a month without ordering the same thing twice.

Mr Wang is fairly unassuming from the outside, and the tables could do with a regular clean, but what it lacks in polish it makes up for in choice. There are rows of noodles, vegetables, mushrooms, meat, fish and various ingredients I couldn’t immediately identify. It is the sort of place where choosing lunch becomes an activity in itself.

I may have arrived with slightly unrealistic expectations. I had seen videos on social media of people cooking their own hotpot at the table and imagined bubbling broth, lots of stirring and a wonderfully immersive experience. That isn’t quite how it works at Mr Wang. You take a bowl, fill it with whatever you fancy and pay according to its weight. The kitchen then cooks everything for you in your chosen broth. It is less interactive than cooking your own hotpot, but probably much better for food hygiene – and it means somebody who knows what they are doing is in charge.

The amount of choice is genuinely impressive. There were several types of noodles, including yam noodles, alongside bean curd, squid, tripe, fish, meat, mushrooms and piles of greens. Everything was replenished regularly, so even as the restaurant became busier, the selection remained plentiful.

It is a brilliant opportunity to push your taste buds and try ingredients you would never usually order. It is also quite overwhelming, especially when you have allergies and are trying to identify everything, serve yourself and remain vaguely aware of the weight of your bowl. You can take it up to be weighed, but for someone who has no idea of 200g in real terms, I just had to shuffle forwards and backwards after each item was added.

Allergen information was available, but the screen had become blurry after water got into it. A member of staff lent me their phone so I could read it properly, which was helpful, although a clearer permanent display would make ordering much easier.  Some of the greens also still had visible dirt on them, which was off-putting. I know vegetables come from the ground. I just don’t particularly want the ground to come with them. I was also initially unsure about seeing raw meat alongside the noodles and vegetables, but having everything cooked by the kitchen rather than at the table was reassuring.

Once cooked, the bowl arrived as a colourful, steaming mixture with plenty of flavour. Part of the fun is that everyone’s meal will be completely different. You can be adventurous with tripe and squid, stick to relatively familiar ingredients or, as I did, become overexcited and add a little bit of almost everything that I recognised. Some of my choices worked better than others. The meat and enoki mushrooms were a little chewy, but the broth was really tasty and there were plenty of different flavours and textures to explore.

The surprise star was a side dish: the pork burger. “Burger” does not really describe it. It was more like a giant spring roll in burger form – crisp on the outside, packed with pork and extremely moreish. Our son’s verdict was more straightforward: “More. More. More.” He then used the chopsticks as drumsticks, which suited the setting perfectly. Gloucester Green is loud, lively and always busy. This is not a hushed restaurant for a long, peaceful lunch; it is somewhere to embrace the bustle, fill a bowl with unfamiliar ingredients and see what happens.

Mr Wang offers something genuinely different among the many restaurants of Gloucester Green. The huge choice can take a little navigating, particularly with allergies, and there are a few details that could be improved. But it is interesting and a very easy way to become more adventurous without committing to an entire plate of something unfamiliar. Next time, I would be a little more selective with my hotpot ingredients.I would not show the same restraint with the pork burger.

Mr Wang
95 Gloucester Grn, Oxford OX1 2DF

Bitten were invited as guests, all views are our own