Lunch at Oscar’s Wine Bar and Bistro in York – Review. Just after New Year I met up with some lovely friends that I don’t see often enough. We have children of various ages so it was decided that we should do a Treasure Hunt of York. We are all from York, it’s still a nice thing to do – there were snickets and alleyways I had never been down before. You often don’t explore your own city enough!
Anyway, the trail led us from the Mansion House, up Lendal and into the Museum Gardens. From there we headed into Exhibition Square and up Petergate then into Dean Park. After a stroll around the Minster we wandered down Stonegate and cut through Coffee Yard to Grape Lane.
At this point my kids were getting ‘hangry’ so we chanced our arm for a large table in Oscar’s on Swinegate. To my surprise they could accommodate all eleven of us, so we headed in out of the cold. It’s an independent restaurant and has been a York favourite for as long as I can remember (it moved round the corner from its original site a few years ago). It’s got a cosy, contemporary vibe going on and works well for lunch or dinner in the evening.
Lunch at Oscar’s Wine Bar in York
We really wanted good quality comfort food. I chose the Oscar’s Dirty Chicken Stack for £12.95 – “Alternate layers of spiced chicken breast, nachos, red onion and jack cheese, all in a sesame seed brioche bun with lettuce, smoked chipotle sauce and mayonnaise, served in a ration tray with red slaw, Oscar’s fries, and beer battered onion rings.” Loved the chicken breast and would happily have eaten another one of these. I’d like to see more sauce and would not bother with the tortilla chips again. The onion rings were excellent.
My husband went for the Plain Burger with melted Monty Jack cheese and bacon, priced at £11.95. He often eats burgers and enjoyed this.
My daughter went for the kid’s vegetarian nachos. I was impressed with the portion size but I should have asked them to not add the guacamole. My son also had the kid’s nachos but the version with chili. He found the chili a bit on the spicy side!
The kids’ meals were just under a fiver and included a drink.
One of the other children with us ordered the kid’s burger which in hindsight I think my son would have preferred. It was a decent size and looked good value.
If you are in the market for a quick snacky lunch then I would recommend the cheese and chips. Coming in at a budget friendly £3.95 these are filling and tasty too.
I love Oscar’s. It has a great atmosphere, the food is good and reasonably priced. On this occasion I felt the service wasn’t the warm and friendly ‘happy to help’ standard I would expect. Perhaps someone was having a bad day, so I wouldn’t let it put me off future visits.
