2013, Year of the Sausage

 Happy New Year, we're calling 2013 the Year of the Sausage - This'll be my only long post of the year, but it's kind of a resolutions post, so I figure I'm allowed!

Bangers & Mash, Barbecues & Beer:

It's the year when we settle into our new home and spread our wings as Sausageers - Since I opened the place 9years ago in Jericho, I've known that I really want to have a place that's Bangers & Mash in Winter and Barbecue & Beers in summer. There's no better place for that in Oxford than the Castle Quarter, with our massive forecourt area.

From Mayday onwards, starting with a major MayDay morning feast, we'll be having Barbecues whenever the weather is good enough, celebrating that other great institution of the British culinary calendar, the Summer BBQ.

A Hesitant Start:

Looking back, I'm afraid to say I have an admission to make, we were a bit useless, between opening and the New Year. I had to make a decision when we opened, to either employ waiting staff who knew the job, but didn't really care about the Customer's experience, or to employ nice people and train them from scratch, but know that they'd care about whether you had a good experience. 

Well, I chose the second, I don't believe we're in the catering 'business', we are in Hospitality, and it's a huge difference. I don't believe that many of the restaurants on the High Street today are hospitable, I think they're more interested in upselling, in making their margins and in ensuring that the spreadsheet works, my thought is that if you're good enough at being hospitable, the rest should follow.

I'm happy to report that as soon as the New Year broke, staff began to understand what The abig Bang was about and started to realise they were being hospitable, not following instructions - I feel confident now that everyone visiting will have a pretty splendid experience.

However, If your experience isn't up to scratch, we'd always welcome comments and feedback, but similarly, if you have a good experience, we'd happily take any good comments, ideally on some forum as visible as TripAdvisor, weirdly, after 8years of hard work, all of our reviews and any web presence was devoured by our move to the Castle Quarter. Without a major marketing budget, it's the only way to get people to know about you, so we'd always welcome s nice review.

Big Bang Pigs: 

Last year we started serving up vegetables grown by prisoners at SpringHill Farm prison, this season we have our own piglets roaming around their perimeter fence, ready to become our sausages early in Spring - Keep an eye out for them popping up on twitter and Facebook (Follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook) 

Jazz & Sing for your Sausages: 

We have a stunning season of Jazz lined up each Tuesday night, check it out on the website, see what you fancy.

And, if you're any good at tinkling the ivories, come and have a play on a Monday night, when we'll swap some good piano-work for meals and drinks, depending upon how good you are! 

Other stuff:

New menu hits the streets on Monday, with pineapple & cheese on sticks as a starter, more cracking Great British pudds and some cream teas, so you don't have to pay the exorbitant price tags elsewhere!  Our Sunday Roasts and our Friday Fish & chips are becoming rightfully appreciated and we're becoming known as a place which sympathises and understands allergies, so come along if you've got a dietary need or two, we'd be delighted to feed you, safely. Check out the Menu

So, 2013 is going to be a tricky year, but we aim to bring the Oxford Castle Quarter back to form & show what a spectacular corner of Oxford it is, we'll always have a good meal at the right price, no matter how gloomy the economy gets!

Happy 2013, Year of the Sausage

New Year - 2013 - Year of the Sausage

We had a busy Christmas period, admittedly we weren't on our finest game, but we had a lot of people who now know where the restaurant is and will hopefully come and see us when we're not flying around like a headless sausage.
Staffing is always an issue in a place like this, you can't afford to do what the chains do and recruit and train hundreds of people, you have to make the decision to either employ nice people and then train them to carry plates, or employ trained and tired waiters and train them to give a damn, I always opt for the first option, but it can sometimes make things tricky during those early months!

So, 2013, our resolutions are to give the very best service in Oxford, to have staff who actually care, and who aren't serving you from some laminated instructions from Head Office, but who are truly being Hospitable, we are in the hospitality industry after all.
We aim to give the best coffees and needless to say best sausagey based, Great British meal in Oxford, one which supports as many local farmers, brewers, vintners and vegetable growers, prisons and colleges as possible and we'll do it with continued style.

I, for one, can't wait for the sun to start to shine, as our Courtyard area will form the most amazing place ever seen in Oxford for when Bangers & Mash gives way to Barbeque and Beers!

Happy New Year, we hope to see you whenever you would normally have been going to a chain restaurant in 2013.

Max

Getting Mullered

Some exciting stuff is afoot in The Oxford Castle Quarter - Yes, it's British Sausage Week and Yes, we've been awarded the highest accolade for ethical operations in Britain, three stars from the Sustainable Restaurant Association, but it's the mulled wine that I'm talking about.

If you've a booking at The Big Bang over the coming weeks or months, try to arrive an hour early, if you're able, and drop in next door where I'm running a mulled wine bar, called Mullered, between now and Christmas.

There are going to be other things going on, including a Deli (more details tomorrow) a Popup Christmas Market and a nightspot, but for now, if you're in town and you're cold, or if you're headed to Sausage HQ, then drop in to Mullered and get some of the best mulled wine that money can buy.

Come and be part of bringing the Castle back to life, reclaiming it as a part of Oxford for us!

Happy Sausage Week - Here's to the Great British Banger

To showcase the Great British Banger this British Sausage Week, here's a video of all we do at The Big Bang - There'll be lots more coming this week, including some of our most unusual sausages ever & a splendid partnership with 'Mullered', a brand new wine bar opened up next door!

Hope to see you some time this week

http://vimeo.com/52807071

Happy Sausaging

No Bangers tonight

If you're standing in the cold, shivering outside the Big Bang and wondering why on earth the lights are off, then I have to apologise to you.

I've taken my staff for a Christmas Dinner with our friends at The Oxford Blue (You should try it some time!)

They've worked tirelessly over the last 2 months to resurrect The Big Bang from the rubble of Walton Street and have made this corner of Oxford Castle our own. We have a full restaurant near every night and are receiving a resounding chorus that we're a welcome re-addition to the Oxford catering scene.

I've taken them out for dinner to mark the end of our teething period - If you don't get what you've ordered from now on in, if you wait too long or don't get the experience you expect from The Big Bang, then prod us, poke us, tell us and make sure we're doing it right!

Once tonight is over, we'll be open 7 days a week from 10am to 11pm and serving breakfast, lunches, dinners, Great British feasts and sterling Sunday roasts, pastries and cracking locally roasted coffees.
Our wifi is Ferrari fast and free, without any restrictions and our Christmas meals commence in 14 days  - at the very best price in Oxford.

If that wasn't enough, then a Mulled Wine bar will be opening next door, a Christmas Supermarket and a Popup restaurant, along with a quiet nightspot for the more discerning customer. We'd love you to come say Hullo!

In the meantime, I'm wishing my staff a Happy early Christmas, Max

Just like nature's 'The Big Bang' - Things happen fast

Someone, somewhere clearly thinks that letting me PLAY is a good idea, that bringing some fun to the Oxford Castle Quarter is long overdue - It's amongst the most stunning parts of Oxford and yet, when I lived in Jericho, I didn't bother to visit it, because I was sure there wasn't anything much to visit there.

I need to tell you that it's changed over just the last few days, that the Oxford Castle Quarter is now the very heart of your City, with not only The Big Bang, but also a Popup Christmas Super-Market, a Mulled wine bar and perhaps even a popup restaurant from time to time. And you're the first to know it, so don't tell a soul....

Winter Light Night will see a Polar Bear roaming around the Castle Yard in front of the Big Bang and live music will pepper the calendar between now and the New Year.

If you've not yet been, it's time to rediscover the Castle Quarter and see what fun we're having down here. You'll fall for it, I guarantee

An American in Sausage Heaven

Introducing the wonderful Betsy Masson's verdict on our Great British Cuisine, as a complete newcomer! It's priceless.....

Bangers and Mash

There is an entire language of food in England that I have discovered.
We went to a new restaurant in our castle grounds (we have now been to
almost all of the restaurants in the Oxford Castle grounds –note
earlier comments about the Krispy Kreme shop for coffee and the Swan
and Castle for our earliest meals of fish and chips and all have been
really quite unique and excellent in their own ways), which only
opened two weeks ago called The Big Bang and were introduced to the
world of bangers and mash.

Actually we had walked over to peer into The Big Bang a few days ago,
carrying a box of pizza leftovers, and were greeted by Max (owner) 
who popped out and handed us a newspaper to cover our pizza
box- it was raining so I wasn’t sure if he was worried about a wet
pizza or wanted us to realize that we should hide a pizza box when
walking past an authentic English bangers and mash restaurant. I read
the newspaper from cover to cover- all 4 pages of it - and realized I
had no idea what most of the food in the menu (2 of the 4 pages) was!
So we went back for breakfast and Max very kindly sat with us and gave
me a vocabulary, history, and culinary set of lessons about English
food.

Let me start with “mash.” Apparently a mash begins with mashed
potatoes and then can be expanded from there. Max spoke with great
admiration for the English potato - it apparently sits in the ground
for 8 months, absorbing water and various underground flavors (dirt,
bugs, appropriate composts?), and then is dug up and becomes the
central component of any mash. Just as we might add cheese, garlic, or
sour cream to our mashed potatoes, the mash over here has a far
greater range of possibilities and seems to be a fairly central staple
of English food. For example, there is the simple creamed mash (most
like ours I suspect), the garlic and rosemary mash, the grain mustard
mash, the spring onion mash, the rose mash (beets and red cabbage
added), or the celeriac (fabulous word- almost religious in tone) mash
(celery root mashed and added). All mashes are accompanied by gravies,
which also have a range of possibilities, including red wine gravy,
stilton gravy (Isn’t stilton a cheese? How does that work?), rosemary
gravy, or vegetable gravy. It has occurred to me that with only a week
left here and given there are twenty different bangers and mashes on
the menu, I need to immediately go and order a meal of just mashes-
maybe a bowl of each kind with a small pot of each of the gravies.
Sounds like heaven.

But that leads me to the bangers or sausages on this menu. I asked Max
why a sausage is called a banger. I believe his answer (by this time I
was taking notes, and Max was leaping up to greet every customer, chat
a bit, then return to me and my questions, and within a few minutes,
off again, so I was both delighted to have such an incredibly helpful
source of information but quite discombobulated by the intermittent
flow of the details) was about the poor quality of sausage meat during
the war (important note- apparently “the war” refers to World War II,
while the “great war” is World War I—I think- remember, Max is moving
at high speed now about the restaurant and since I am old- my mind
doesn’t catch every detail these days) so when the bangers were
cooked, the higher content of water in them (I think) caused them to
explode “bang” and they became known as bangers. And if that somehow
isn’t correct, I think it sounds awfully good so I will just stay with
it. So bangers are a whole vast array of sausages. Some at the Big
Bang include Welsh pork and leek sausages, lamb and mint sausages,
wild venison sausages, basil and vine tomato sausages, wild boar and
pigeon sausages, stilton and walnut sausages and about 15 other
choices. His menu is totally entertaining to read- he has something
called the Cheapskate Sausage with a note- “2 less delicious sausages
with a simple mash”. Why would one buy this? I have no idea but the
English have a very strange sense of humor. Or his Wild Boar and
Pigeon Sausage comes with the note, “Don’t even ask, just be brave and
try them out.”

The bangers and mash were only the tip of the iceberg in this food
language lesson. When Max first sat down, I asked if I could ask a few
questions and my first was from the first item on the menu- "What are
“boiled eggs and soldiers”? OK, the “boiled eggs” I could guess,
except we are talking soft boiled, not hard-boiled. But the “soldiers”
refer to toast cut in triangles to dip in the egg yolk, and apparently
this is even a bit controversial- the toast is either thin cut or
thick cut (depending on the individual) with a bit of butter but not
melted butter or it will drip into the egg—you see where I am going
with this.  I mean really, who has time for this kind of angst over
eggs and toast. I guess if one lives on an island with only 15 minutes
of news (repeated on SkyNews in 15 minute loops for 24 hours every
day), boiled eggs and thickness of toast becomes important. Then after
we ordered our breakfast of two eggs (bright orange yolks again),
sausages, a rasher of bacon (no idea what a rasher is but it means two
rounds of a ham like food), baked beans, sauteed mushrooms, 1/2 a
sauteed tomato, and triangles of toast (I guess ready for any dipping
we might do), Max mentioned that we might like some "marmite." Marmite
comes in a little tiny plastic pack, much like a butter pack, and is
apparently spread on toast by individuals who have some highly
developed masochistic tendencies. This stuff was AWFUL!!! It is brown
and gooey and tastes like a combination of boiled down Worcestershire
sauce, cider vinegar, maybe mustard, and possibly other ingredients I
was unable to taste because I was so horrified by what was in my
mouth. Once I recovered, the rest of the breakfast was fabulous.

Then there is the Bubble and Squeak. I am REALLY unclear what this is
but it has to do with frying together all your leftovers from
Christmas dinner on Boxing Day, which is the day after Christmas and
is apparently a VERY important holiday here, because it is an official
day off from employment so that everyone can either go shopping or fox
hunt (checked in Wikipedia on that detail). So the Bubble and Squeak
has mashed potatoes as its base and then I suppose whatever vegetables
are traditionally eaten on Christmas day, fried to a crisp golden and
served with cold beef or turkey.

Another menu uncertainty was the Toad in the Hole. Again this is
something with sausages in a batter and fried. Why any food eaten by
humans is purposely called a Toad in the Hole was never explained (by
now Max was moving at supersonic speeds greeting and chatting) so I
had to simply remain in the dark on this detail. And I might add from
a personal point of view that any food item that has “toad” in its
name remains seriously suspect, given how I feel about toads!
Unfortunately, the night we went to try out the dinner menu, the Toad
in the Hole was not being served, so we made do with Shepherd’s Pie, a
ground meat thing with baked mashed potatoes on top. Mom used to make
this, so I had to give this one a 9.5 as compared to Mom’s 10, but it
was quite delicious.

So, the English’s rather strange sense of humor, combined with living
on a small island for several thousand years, has created a truly
interesting culinary vocabulary that actually is almost childlike in
its appeal. It begins to explain how Harry Potter and the Rabbit Hole
can arise from such wonderful, odd imaginations.