We live and work in a small half square mile. To one side of us is the restaurant. To the other, Aston’s Eyot, a 32-acre nature reserve.
A hundred years ago, this eyot (or small island) was the rubbish tip of Oxford, a dumping ground for domestic, university and small business waste. It’s been reworked over the years since, but glass and china fragments can still be found everywhere. A happier legacy are the numerous fruit trees: apple, pear and sweet cherry. Most of these are thought to have self-sown from discarded fruit.
When our kids were younger they used to go to the primary school just next door. Inside the grounds were some mature apple trees, presumably once a part of the eyot itself. The teachers reprimanded any child reaching for the fragrant, fallen fruit: “It’ll give you a poorly tummy!”, they would cry. One year, some plucky parents used the apples to make a delicious juice that was sold at the winter fair. Most of the time the fruit lay in waste, branded unfit to eat – unless you wanted to take it home and cook with it.
September is apple season here in the UK. In Oxford there’s always a box out the front of someone’s house offering out fruit from the garden. If you walk through Aston’s Eyot, apples spill down the paths or lie rotting in the undergrowth.
In his spare time, Yeshi loves taking the kids to climb apple trees in the eyot. They trudge home with bag loads of fruit that they press into juice or turn into cakes and pies. Mostly, however, we just eat through the spoils. Despite local people’s insistence that these are “cooking” apples, we love them straight off the tree.
Yeshi finds the distinctions that we make here – between “cookers”, “eaters” and “dessert” apples – confusing and bewildering: these classifications are unheard of in Tibet. The test, he says, is surely just in how they taste. All apples are safe to eat, but the sharpest and driest are arguably better off cooked or brewed.
Yeshi’s biggest bugbear is how much power we give to our shops during seasons of abundance. Aren’t the apples in our own back gardens always going to taste better than those bagged up in plastic? Since when did we come to rely on the supermarkets to tell us how to enjoy nature’s plenty?
It’s Jewish New Year this week (Shana Tova if you’re celebrating), and we’ve been rediscovering the joys of apple and honey. Apples from the eyot, obvs (honey from Tibet!).
We’re open as usual from tomorrow, as follows:
Weds – Fri: 5-9.30pm (dinner only)
Saturday: 12-3 / 5-9.30pm
Sunday: 12-3 / 5-9pm
This week’s menu is up on the website – check it.
Freezer food: stocks are looking good – come grab! We’re offering our newsletter subscribers excellent deals on some of the dishes in here this week, so all the more reason to stop by. Not a subscriber? Click here.
Looking forward to seeing everyone soon,
Julie and Yeshi
Opening hours this week:
Weds – Fri: 5-9.30pm
Saturday: 12-3pm 🥢 5-9.30pm
Sunday: 12-3pm 🥢 5-9pm
☏ 01865 499318
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