It struck me recently that I hadn’t been to a Chinese restaurant for a while, so I was pretty excited when we were kindly invited to the Little Four Seasons in Headington. I was sent on the promise that they had the ‘best duck in the world’, so I arrived with high hopes. 

On entering, you’d be fooled into thinking that the Little Four Seasons only does takeaways. When we were there, several people were waiting for their order inside the front door (a good sign). However, if you make your way to the back corner, there are stairs that take you to a basement room with several tables. 

The vibe at Little Four Seasons is very casual.

It operates with a counter service, and the downstairs area is more like seating in a food court than a formal restaurant. It suited us perfectly for a quick, tasty midweek meal, and the room was already filled with other diners. 

The menu had a really interesting range of options. We chose a portion of the Cantonese-style roast duck (obvs), as well as veggie spring rolls, diced fillet steak with black pepper sauce, and braised aubergine with minced pork and salty fish. 

It was clear from the menu that this wasn’t just your standard high-street takeaway fare – I can’t say I’ve ever seen ‘spicy and numbing pig’s ear’ as an option before.

It was a tough choice – we were also tempted by the stir-fried honey roast pork with scrambled egg, and the pan-seared sea bass.The dishes arrived on a tray, packaged up in boxes. As I say, this is definitely very casual dining – there isn’t really table service, so you order upstairs at the till and clear your leftovers/rubbish into the bin at the end. The food was accompanied by a couple of dipping sauces, both of which were very tasty. The spring rolls were piping hot, perfectly crisp and generously filled with veggies – really nice with a bit of chilli dip, and a great way to start the meal. 

We then decided we couldn’t possibly wait any longer to tackle the duck.

It looked delicious before we even ate it. It was another large portion, with several slices of moist, flavourful meat swimming in the rich Cantonese-style sauce. The skin on top wasn’t crispy, per se, but was still thin enough to avoid being fatty – maybe not to everyone’s taste, but definitely good for me. 

Next up was the steak in black pepper sauce, which came with green peppers and onions. The substantial chunks of steak were tender and delicious. I often find that the meat is overpowered by the sauce in dishes like this, but not this time; the beef had a great flavour. There was a good amount of sauce and the veggies gave a nice crisp texture. This was another generous helping – definitely enough to share. 

Finally, onto the aubergine and pork.

The small aubergines were very soft but I was a little underwhelmed by the accompanying pork mince – in comparison to the very rich other dishes, the pork’s lighter flavour had much less of an impact. We were absolutely stuffed with these four dishes between the two of us, washed down with two bottles of beer. We didn’t even need any rice or noodles. 

The prices are a little steeper than you might expect to pay elsewhere – our meat dishes came in between £12.80-£15.80 each without any sides, although the spring rolls were more standard at £5.80 (for 6 rolls) – but I’d say you get value for money in terms of portion sizing and taste.

The Little Four Seasons could be a great option if you fancy sharing a few tasty main dishes between friends for an informal get-together. 

Little Four Seasons
65 London Rd, Headington, Oxford OX3 7RD

Bitten were invited as guests, all views are our own