Restaurant: Jamal’s
107-108 Walton Street
Telephone: 01865 554905
In leaving the restaurant last night, I squeezed past a pirate and a sea wench, danced with a fairy and held my friend steady as he lost his dinner to the trash bin on the street. We left topless rugby players at the table next to us, and a line of people waiting to chunder in the bathroom.
To those who haven’t been to Jamal’s — the Indian restaurant on Walton Street — this may seem like an exceptional story. But it’s not. Jamal’s is a scene every weekend, and many weeknights. So much so that to call it a restaurant is would be disingenuous. For Oxford’s sports teams, for graduate and undergraduate clubs, Jamal’s is the de facto venue for any bacchanal. Food here is only a pretext to drunkeness. That, at least, partially explains why the food is so exceptionally poor. (In a damning report, it recently received a zero star rating from Oxford City Council.) Anything of a higher quality would be wasted; the food is prepared to be as easy coming up as it was going down. Welcome to the House of Chunder.
At the House of Chunder, the rules are actually quite simple. They were explained to us the other night as a friend climbed – nay, nearly danced — over the table: Bring your own alcohol, do anything you want, don’t break anything. Fine. But judging from the behavior around us, there is also a set of tacit codes by which Jamal’s operates: Be loud, and when loud, start shouting; all men are to remove their shirts, if not their trousers, at least once over the course of the meal; all drinks are to be mixed, beginning with a base of beer and combining other hard alcohols. It is a messy, messy affair.
In the end, Jamal’s tries to pass as a restaurant. There is always the unsuspecting couple that walks in and is placed in the corner, she wild eyed, he embarrassed. This was certainly true the other night. But again, the food is not simply poor, it’s terrible. Perhaps that explains why, with large groups, they don’t offer you a menu. The experience of ordering is more like negotiating with an experienced auctioneer — the list of items is long, the impression of wealth great, the rhythm fast, the tone clipped and the price barely mentioned. When the food does arrive, it barely alights on the table before its whisked off again. Perhaps, I suspect, to prevent you from realizing how much you’ve just paid for what you’ve eaten. I am not alone in my opinion, either. Visit the reviews section of Daily Info and you’ll find dubious positive reviews next to the most scathing of reviews. I would suggest you heed the latter.
These, then, are the Chunder House Rules: Eat at Jamals. But be ware that it will likely be your last, unless you’re too drunk to remember. These, I suspect, are Jamal’s most loyal customers.
Source: Originally published in The Oxford’s Omnivore, October, 23, 2009.