One of my favourite low-key evenings out involves meeting friends at the cinema and grabbing a meal together beforehand.
Easy, right? Yes, though there’s an art to choosing a dinner spot where you can enjoy good food and still make it to the film on time. I’ve started to think of this as the quick-quality-quotient (or Q3) and have therefore decided to use it as a measure to review my pre-cinema eating experiences. My plan is to work my way around some Oxford dinner-movie combinations and report back.
It’s all about balance: a multi-course meal at the Permit Room has the quality, but you’ll have to eat quite early to make an 8pm showing at the Curzon. On the other hand, a wrap at Najar’s is delicious and top-rated in the ‘quick’ category near the new Oxford Cinema & Café but loses points due to the lack of seating.
I gave this careful thought for a recent outing to the Ultimate Picture Palace.
The UPP is one of my favourite cinemas and it’s in one of Oxford’s best areas for dining, so we were spoilt for choice. Nevertheless, I decided to prioritise speed and check out the Yard just next door to the UPP on Jeune Street. There’s nothing closer.
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The Yard is an open-air food court and community space featuring seven different independent street food vendors including Masala Munch, Glut, Casa di Birria, and Viva la Pizza.
The colourful outdoor space is simple in a picnic-table-on-astroturf way, and I found it very inviting for a casual meal. There’s an indoor hang-out area with games tables to encourage you to linger for a while. When I visited, there was a lively crowd; many of them weren’t even eating because they were having too much fun playing drinking games.
But I was there to eat, so what to choose?
We took a walk around the different food stalls, though you can do your browsing online if you prefer. I lingered a while over the Casa di Birria taco menu but finally got a beef bibimbap from Seoul Food. In no time, I had a hearty bowl filled with rice and topped with soy beef, kimchi, a fried egg and some crispy carrot. It was tasty and satisfying, though I wanted more hot sauce to dial it up a few notches. From Sawadee, we got a Pad Thai chicken bowl with stir-fried noodles, tofu and prawns. The noodles had a great texture, while the tangy tamarind sauce was a bit too sparing to have real tang.
As additional side dish, we ordered their ‘chicken money bags’ dumplings. These crispy parcels, also served in a bowl, came with a zingy plum sauce and were perfect for sharing. It made me wonder if there was any other way except a bowl to get your food at the Yard. But why quibble about casual outdoor dining with main dishes that just cost between £8 and £12?
Overall, the quality was what you’d hope for at an outdoor food market: tasty and satisfying without aiming at high gastronomy.
On the other hand, it gets top marks for being quick, so sits in the mid-range of my imagined Q3 measurement scale. Perhaps more importantly, we even had time afterwards to pop over to G&D’s for an ice cream to sweeten the experience. That definitely added extra points to the evening!
And finally, in case you were wondering, the movie was great, and I can highly recommend the whole Yard + Ultimate Picture Palace experience. It was friendly, fast, and flavoursome.
What are your suggestions for a pre-film dinner near the UPP?
The Yard
49 Jeune Street Oxford, OX4 1BN
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