Sojo Restaurant

My favourite Chinese restaurant ever. I’m a big fan of spicy Szechuan food and Sojo delivers every time. I would recommend Gua Wei Chicken and Mouth Watery Fish, both of which go well with rice. Remember to book if you want dinner, tends to be quite busy even on weekdays!

I went here with 2 colleagues in October. It’s really pretty good, not the best Sichuan food I’ve had, but pretty good. Lots of Asians in there, which is always a good sign. They don’t hurry you in and out, which is nice. I had the sichuan chicken and the dim sum plate. Both are adequate — not the same range of flavors as I’ve had in China, Hong Kong, and even Chicago. But, I’d go there again to give it another shot.

This is the best Chinese I have had. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. The godmother’s sauce is the best. I always get it. You won’t regret Sojo!

I have been on holiday to Beijing with my wife a number of times and I have eaten in one of the quanjude duck restaurants, where my brother in law is a Chef. I can safely say that the food in Sojo at its best is of the same quality, it is authentic northern Chinese cuisine. The shuan (Chinese hotpot) is very good and is a treat in the colder months of the year. It is the best Chinese restaurant in Oxford, in my opinion.

Summary:
+ Proper Chinese restaurant near Oxford train station
+ Spacious and airy
+ Lunch great value for money (from £6.50 for a big main)
+ Big portion!
Overall:
Sojo is a chic Asian restaurant in Oxford that serves authentic Chinese food.
Its spacious dining area was almost full and there were a lot of Asian faces. That’s always a good sign.
The lunch menu had an impressive range of option to choose from. From what I can remember, it had rice bowls, congee, noodles, dim-​sum sections and more. The rice section also says the dishes are served «in a big bowls of rice» in brackets. Nice.
I went for tomato & egg with rice. I’m usually not a big fan of Chinese sweets but I decided to order an egg custard bun for dessert.
Food:
The tomato & egg was served quickly. Just as promised on the menu, the dish was served on a large bowl of steamed rice. £6.50 for this volume is not bad at all. The rice is almost entirely covered by stir-​fried egg and tomatoes mixture with a sprinkle of chopped green onions on top. The tomatoes are very juicy and eggs are soft. The juice from the tomatoes works as a kind of sauce that glues the two ingredients together to make one dish. The sliced tomatoes were extremely hot but still maintained the texture and shape. (Compared that with completely disintegrated tomatoes in a pasta sauce, for example.) Egg mixture is cooked but very soft. All of these things suggest that the stir-​frying process was done very quickly under very strong heat as it should be.
I love the simplicity of this popular comfort food from China. This is one of the best companions to a bowl of white rice.
I was pleasantly surprised by the dessert. The custard buns are served in a mini bamboo steamer. The bun was still hot and had a firm texture. The soft custard was moist and had a subtle coconut flavour.
Overall, the service was pleasant and food was brilliant. This is a must-​go if you happen to find yourself in Oxford. Especially, lunch at Sojo offers a great value for the money.

Giles Coren didn’t call it the best Chinese restaurant outside London for no reason.
Go as Schezhuan as you dare!

Sizzling Szechuan in Oxford which, in my opinion, takes the almost undisputed crown in terms of best Chinese food in the city.
An expansive restaurant in the ‘club’ part of town, with different seating levels once you enter. Though the place was pretty busy, we were served extremely quickly. I was in the mood for vegetarian and went for the spicy aubergine dish which was silky and had the right amount of kick to match the tangy dark sauce. On the table was a milder and sweeter version of the eggplant dish which I enjoyed even more with the rice. The Spicy Beef was really well done as well, and the meat wasn’t as tough as I experienced at other restaurants. Generous portions left me satisfied and left my tongue numb for the proper amount of time afterwards. Love me some Szechuan!
Great experience. Can’t wait to come back and try the dim sum as well!

This is without a doubt the best Chinese food in the city.

My favorite Szechuan restaurant in Oxford, hands down. The food is consistently great, the offerings are plentiful, and the staff is top notch. Every time I visit Oxford, this is my first dinner stop, and I often find myself eating there on consecutive nights. Try the salt and pepper calamari appetizer… awesome!

For northern Chinese food, this is truly a wondrous find: On the two occasions that I had dinner here, I can tell that the chef is the real deal. In Oxford, no less! Incidentally, the Chinese ideograms for the restaurant’s name actually mean «Flaming/​Burning Wine,» which might not be the only thing on fire, if you get my drift…
My dining companion and I tried a total of five dishes over the two occasions we came here for dinner. Some were dishes that were a little off the beaten path, what with the current mania in society for «healthy foods» and all, but sometimes, you’ve got to live a little and relish that incomparable taste of fat that makes a dish so iconic otherwise you won’t ever know what you’re missing! And of all of them, I wasn’t disappointed in any, which is testimony to the chef’s skill. It also doesn’t hurt that the owners, Shuman and Teresa are very genial hosts and bring extra warmth to the already cozy atmosphere of dark colours in a very classic Chinese setting.
In the appetizer category was the Mouth Watering Chicken which was a poached chicken that was covered in a sauce of fiery chili peppers with peanuts sprinkled over it. It certainly lived up to its name. This is definitely not a dish for those with wimpy tastebuds because they’re likely to have them seared off as with a blowtorch. However, for those who can handle it, it’ll provide a nice «glow» in both your faces and stomachs to start the meal off.
The initial foray into the forbidden began with the Shanghai Sweet Soy Braised Belly Pork dish which we had with plain white rice (in the old and traditional days, only animals were fed brown rice or unthreshed rice). With its generous cuts of fat-​laced pork belly covered in a thick sweet soy sauce and with the white rice to «cut» its artery-​clogging richness somewhat, I was in Seventh Heaven. This was food from my childhood when the «fat is bad» mantra just didn’t exist. It was oh-​so-​good and brought back memories of times past and of home in Singapore.
We ordered the Mapo Tofu with its classic chili and meat sauce as a sort of counterbalance. It was another dish that didn’t disappoint. The ground pork swimming in that beautiful spicy sauce mixed in with the usual bowl of rice just hit the right spots where it counted. The spiciness wasn’t as intense as I’ve had at some other restaurants and this is a good thing because it’s so hard to taste something when your tongue feels like it’s been run over by a lidocaine steamroller! Not to mention that drooling because your lips don’t work any more is so unbecoming…
On another visit, we decided to just «go gangbusters» and ordered the Shanghai Sweet Soy Pork Hock which just made my day. It was one entire pork hock that had been stewed in the traditional sweet thick soy sauce which infused the entire hock rather than just its surface. Now, the tree-​hugging health nuts will probably be turning up their noses in disgust but, as I said, you haven’t had true Chinese food until you’ve tried the richer dishes at least once (and risk your doctor going apoplectic on your next visit)! Okay, it’s not something to have daily or even weekly but once in a while, to quote Gordon Gekko in «Wall Street»: «Greed is good!» And amen to that.
Now we come to Tofu in Crabmeat Sauce: The silky tofu cooked with the divine crabmeat made for an incomparable taste sensation that also sent shivers up my spine. Singaporeans can summarize this feeling in one word, «Shiok!» In other restaurants that I’ve had this dish, they skimped on the crabmeat and/​or even used low-​quality crabmeat, which detracted from the overall taste. But not here. At Sojo, they use a well picked-​through, high quality backfin crabmeat (this is one dish where jumbo lump crabmeat would not have worked) so that you don’t end up with crab shell or cartilage in your teeth nor is there a fishy flavor. Despite its reddish colouring, it has no chilli of any sort in it whatsoever, so rejoice all ye who have wimpy tastebuds or sensitive gastrointestinal systems!
This is a restaurant that I am dying to return to so that I can wander through its menu searching for another «hit» of nirvanic bliss on each visit. Since I happen to live on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, I’m sure that Sir Richard Branson will be more than happy to have me add to his already bulging coffers and perhaps Virgin Galactic. Assuming his pilots park their cars on time for a change and we don’t miss our departure slot again: Nothing is quite so ludicrous as hearing your flight is delayed because your pilot is looking for a parking spot for his car… it was like being stuck in an episode of Mr. Bean!

Another good chinese place we came across in our wonderings in Oxford. We were all excited looking at the menu, Sichuan hot pot! We were so going there as soon as we had a chance and a few days latter we did.
I really should give this place 4 stars for the entrainment value of the visit there, and the food was almost top notch but fell just a bit short.
We sat down and we were promptly visited by a waitress and we asked for the hot pot. Unfortunately they have stopped serving it. Sounds like Sichuan pepper corns and the hot chilies are not really on the English palate. But that is ok, there were plenty of other interesting things to try.
And this is where the entertainment value came in. First we had to convince the waitress we really knew what we were talking about when it comes to types of asian food that most americans (and probably Britts) don’t appreciate or enjoy. So that was funny. An item on the menu was chinese greens. I asked was this item, Gai Choy or maybe U Choy? I knew it wasn’t Gai Long as they had that (called Kai long though). The waitress had a different word for it and we ended up drawing pictures of the different veggies. Turns out it was just napa cabbage but it was cooked beautifully in a light sauce. An Excellent choice. We then ordered one of the Sichuan Gan Shao Whole fried fish (minced pork and water chestnut sauce). «I’ll fillet if for you so you don’t have to» said the Waitress. My wife and I both jumped up and said «NO No we want the head! Give us the whole fish!» Which was way too funny. She agreed the head was the best part but most people don’t want to be bothered with it. I emphatically told her we had to have the whole fish, besides it was listed like that on the menu!
We also ordered some dumplings and sat back to wait. The dumplings came fast but the rest of the meal was a bit of a wait. The dumplings weren’t really that good and a bit forgettable and probably the real reason I’m giving them three stars. The fish was good but could have been excellent and mind blowing. It was deep fried and then water chest nuts, pork, chilies and a bit of sauce was served on top. Which had a good flavor, but the fish had lost its crispness as the sauce had been sitting on it for some time. Something like this needs to be served immediately and if it had been, it would have blown my mind. Don’t get me wrong, the fish was very tender, properly cooked and the items placed on top of it were good as well, but there wasn’t a synergy of parts. So close. ON the other hand, we ate the entire head, leaving nothing but the back bone of the fish.
We enjoyed the meal, probably better than most things we get in the states, but I’m disappointed that a lack of proper execution kept me from having a mind blowing meal. But I would go back, no worries about that. Hell, look how long this review is, I must of liked something!

Excellent authentic Chinese food, lots of Sichuan and Shanghainese specialities. Nice décor too. I don’t know Oxford particularly well, but if I spent more time here I’d definitely go back.

Absolutely fantastic, we love making up our own receipes for the mongolian wok which is cooked fresh for you in front of your eyes and at such a low cost. Always plenty of orientials in there which as an English person I find is always a great sign of a good chinese restaurant.

The first time I came here the food was just ooookay, no biggie. For some reason, the second time around was A LOT better. We ordered three dim sum dishes and a noodle dish to share, and they were surprisingly good! And just FYI, I’m a FOB, so I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Chinese food… especially dim sum.
So we had the shrimp and pork siu mai, which I would rank as Pretty Damn Good. We also had deep-​fried spring rolls, which again were really good… but then again, it’s pretty hard to screw up something deep-​fried. Unfortunately, the chicken sticky rice was slightly less impressive than the other dishes… for those of you who know your dim sum lingo, it was the lor mai gai, which is chicken with sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves. Sojo’s version doesn’t use 100% sticky rice… I think it’s a mixture of 50 – 50 sticky rice and normal rice, which results in disappointingly dry lor mai gais. Hrmph. When I go for dim sum, I want the artery-​clogging goodness of lard and sticky rice, dammit! But the saving grace of the meal was the beef brisket noodles. Oh dear sweet lord, the noods were soooooo good! They came slathered in this super savory thick sauce, and although the meat was kinda on the dry side, I was totally sold on the dish because of the noodles. Mmmm! I’m salivating just thinking about them now.
Need… more… noods…