Christopher Gray is surprised yet another burger joint has opened in George Street

The discerning diners of Oxford would appear to have tired of pizzas with toppings that could have been styled either imaginative or plain yucky. Things like Indian chicken, Danish blue and butternut squash, rump steak and mozzarella and — I taste it still! — roast turkey and stuffing. So, it’s farewell Fire & Stone and a warm(ish) welcome to its large George Street premises (for many years, you might remember, Old Orleans) to Cleaver.

A new name — and not an especially good name, I happen to think — on the nation’s high streets, the chain is the latest project of restaurant magnate Jonathan Kaye. He is the man behind the pizza and pasta specialist Prezzo, which has a branch in the Oxford Castle development and three more across the county, including a new one in Bicester.

The first Cleaver opened in the Surrey town of Cobham in June and was quickly followed by others in Wokingham and Leatherhead. Ours arrived just before Christmas, and more are coming soon. Kaye has said he considers the company a work in progress, with fine tuning ahead before every aspect of the chain’s ‘offering’ is precisely fixed.

While nothing can now be done about that name — too in-yer-face rugged for me — one area that might benefit from a rethink is the menu, which seems rather limited in its range at the moment.

Doing a few things well is the buzz thing in London now, with Mark Hix and his Tramshed and Nick Jones’s Chicken Shop. The first offers only chicken and steaks; the second is chicken only.

Cleaver is chicken, too, plus pork ribs and a range of burgers, including one with chicken breast (readers might wonder if I’m trying for a record with my repeated references to chicken — sorry, there’s another one!).

Fearful, perhaps, of looking too imitative of Tramshed, Cleaver does not do steaks, but I think it should. Apart from anything else, that name suggests big lumps of bloody meat, for a start, and anyone lured in by that prospect might feel short changed when these are not forthcoming.

Prime cuts of Aberdeen Angus beef — including sirloin and rump — are minced up for the burgers; indeed, that is all they consist of until late in their grilling when a little seasoning is added. Why not leave them unminced, I wondered.

George Street offers no specialist outlets for steak — although Wetherspoon’s Four Candles was doing a roaring trade in them during its Tuesday steak night when Rosemarie and I called in for a Tanqueray and tonic ‘sharpener’ on our way towards Cleaver.

But there are already, right opposite the restaurant, two establishments — the Gourmet Burger Company and Byron — aiming for the high-end trade in minced beef patties.

As for chicken, this has an undoubted market leader in Nando’s. Its Oxford branch is usually rammed; it was even on a wet Tuesday night as we crossed Worcester Street dinnerwards.

Cleaver, by contrast, was pretty empty, with such customers as there were ranged at tables beside the wide windows looking out on George Street. There was no one at all in the huge basement area — on one side of which is a kitchen, where chefs work open to view at their gleaming rotisserie and grill. The charcoal used in cooking lies around the place in brown paper sacks adding a ‘working’ feel to the interior — sort of a warehouse, sort of a mine, sort of a ship, in some of its lighting and gangways. Wood on the walls comes from old railway carriages and a school gymnasium’s floor. You can read about this in messages scrawled around the place.

Decorwise, it’s reminiscent of Bill’s, even to the Chesterfield sofas scattered among the timber-topped tables. Cleaver might also imitate that successful chain in functioning in part as a shop (it already does takeaway food).

Its bottled sauces and dressings could prove a mighty successful line. The mango, chilli and pepper dressing I poured over my mixed salad (baby tomatoes, leaves, red onion rings) was superb.

My succulent half-chicken (“from selected Norfolk farms”) was immensely livened, too, by a gorgeous smoked tomato sauce.

Did I say that Cleaver doesn’t do starters? I didn’t, but the lack of them doesn’t really matter. You could choose to start with chicken wings — five or ten of them — or corn on the cob (very retro!) or even, I suppose, a bowl of ribs. I opened with a bowl of juicy olives in oil — green and black and every one of them pitted, in line with Gray’s Law that all should be, or none. A mixture can prove lethal to teeth. These segued smoothly into the fowl, along with a delicious fresh-tasting coleslaw (none of that cloying, sugary mayonnaise of the bought-in stuff) and crispy golden-skin-on fries. We shared these, with Rosemarie chomping contentedly at her burger, which came with melted cheese and strips of excellent bacon. She even had room for a waffle (she thought it a tad on the soggy side) with maple syrup and vanilla ice cream.

Though I don’t do puds, I was impressed by some of the range offered here, including banana bread and butter pudding, lemon sherbet Alaska and vanilla cheesecake with fruit coulis.

Something else I didn’t mention concerning the food is that there are three salads — blue cheese, walnut and beetroot; warm goat’s cheese; and chicken, bacon and avocado. They are all £9.95, suggesting main course dimension.

The range of drinks has plenty of the soft variety, shakes included, as well as cocktails, “hard liquor”, beers and wine. We enjoyed a perfectly decent Sicilian chardonnay (Costadune).

Service with a smile was supplied throughout — principally by a young Spaniard from the hills above Valencia. His name is Gerardo but he has always been called Monty — he explained in an appealing Manuelesque accent — “because my father is Gerardo too and this caused confusion when my mother shouted for us”.

Cleaver
36 George Street, Oxford, OX1 2BG
01865 251718 or cleaverrestaurants.co.uk

Opening times: Monday to Saturday noon-11pm; Sunday noon-10.30pm
Parking: City centre car parks
Key personnel: General manager Rene Tovar; head chef Fabiano Leandro Fernandes
Make sure you try the... skin-on fries, coleslaw, bowl of olives and mixed salad (all £2.95); half chicken (£8.50), cheese and bacon burger (£8.95), full rack of ribs from locally-sourced pork (£11.95), chicken bacon and avocado salad (£9.95); chocolate salted caramel tart (£4.75) and waffle with maple syrup ((£4.25)
In ten words: Slightly limited choice but what they offer is done well