Famed chef’s new restaurant sends a mixed message, says Katherine MacAlister

It was more 50 Shades of Grey than The Godfather – all red croc wallpaper, black leather seats and suede tablecloths – than the hearty American-Italian we had anticipated.

We fully expected Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson to be blindfolding each other on the next banquette, paddles in hand.

Instead, we had to make do with Marco Pierre White staring down at us from every wall, rendering his new restaurant more of a gallery than a bistro; a shrine to the famous chef, or one he was.

There’s even a picture of him sitting on a stripy armchair, legs crossed, chin tilted, as if seated on a throne. The arrogance is palpable, the challenge unquestionable. Fine if he had something to brag about.

But staring down at my plate of corn, crab cakes, skins and ribs, I could only marvel at his mistaken belief that he could dazzle us into believing that, with the hype surrounding Marco’s New York Italian Oxford, his name alone would suffice.

Because it doesn’t. In fact, it only served to highlight how far Marco has fallen since the heady days of his first Michelin stars in the small, sweaty and magnificently creative kitchen at Harvey’s, with his old mucker Gordon Ramsay.

Which is a shame, because the new venture under the Eastgate Hotel in High Street had potential.

Admittedly, it has always been a difficult location, halfway down and a bit of a slog from either end, as its last incarnation, the High Table Brasserie, discovered. But still, somewhere new...

It was so dark inside, thanks to the trendy filament lights, that it took a while for our eyes to get accustomed to the gloom. But we soon noted the neat hotel/ restaurant-style refurb job.

What Marco knows about American-Italian dining, I have no idea, but apparently he has such blood on his mother’s side.

It means the menu covers all the bases, so they can serve Tex Mex, pasta and pizza, however badly the food goes together.

There was nothing on the menu that stirred my interest; the offerings of ribs, chicken, steak, pasta, risotto and pizza utterly predictable and uninspired.

We ordered the £15.50 New Yorker sharing platter, to see if the kitchens would prove us wrong, shake us up and show what they could do. When the food arrived, on a silver stand, it was like a posh Harvester; the crab cakes weren’t home-made, the skins suspiciously uniform, the corn smelled funny, chicken and ribs unremarkable, nachos tasty, but, overall, Marco, what are you doing putting your name to this kind of food? Shame!

What followed was an equally unexciting main course selection: the hotdog (I kid you not) came in a brioche bun with crispy onions, coleslaw, chips and a selection of sauces, but didn’t set my world on fire at all for £9.95. I wanted juice and excitement. I wanted the kind of Americana experience you don’t find over here. I wanted sauce and flavour dripping down my sleeves, not the polite, neat, apologetic British offering that emerged and was no better than anything served up on our own summer barbecue.

The burger came with all the trimmings, but the chips were abysmally dull and, despite the dish costing £12.50, the waitress didn’t ask us how we wanted it cooked, which said it all.

The chicken caesar salad (£10.95) was generous and nicely presented and the saltimbocca chicken (£17.95) was really tasty and moist, with sage through the middle; certainly the dish of the night.

However, by this time the stultifying atmosphere had taken its toll and no amount of delicious cocktails or a fantastic wine list could reinvigorate us. Marco had clearly left the building long ago, taking all the fun with him.

So we shrugged when offered pudding; inertia spreading despite the best efforts of the charming restaurant manager, Dorota Pluta.

And we were right: Marco’s tiramisu (all desserts were £5.95) tasted bitter and unloved; the panna cotte with raspberry coulis was marginally better, but the espresso affogato pointless, neither the ice cream or coffee delivering the richness I expected.

Marco’s New York Italian’s strange hybrid lacked passion. Perhaps a bit of 50 Shades would do him the world of good.

Marco’s New York Italian 
73 High Street, Oxford 
01865 248695/ mpwrestaurants.co.uk/marcos-oxford

Opening times: Monday-Saturday, noon-10pm; Sunday, noon-9pm
Key personnel: Restaurant manager Dorota Pluta and, inescapably, Marco Pierre White
Make sure you try the... Cocktails, we had a gin fizz with elderflower and it was delicious.
In ten words: Marco Pierre White’s eating place by name and name only