The Railway, Wheatley, Oxon

The run from work to Wheatley took a bit longer than I expected: right at an hour by the time I found the Railway pub. The climb up Shotover Hill while only about 125 meters higher than the River Thames at St. Clements Street was the first significant hill I’ve done since the Snowdonia Marathon and I was a little slower covering the ground on the way up there than I expected; and, since it started raining on route I took the downhill segment a bit more carefully than planned, as well.  Not to worry, because once I found the pub it was a good one.

I ordered a Fuller’s Seafarer and had a quick look at the lunch menu.  There was only one guy at the bar, but the restaurant was doing a cracking business.

The place is, essentially, a restaurant specialising in Thai food, but quite a serviceable pub as well.  I ordered a panang curry pork for £5.00 and got a heaping bowl full of thin pork, perfectly cooked french beans, and rice.  The sauce was a paste of fresh ginger (it still had a bit of the ginger texture) and red curry sauce and a few spices that I couldn’t quite place but everything seemed to retain its individual flavour and these expressed themselves as the whim took them.

There was also a generous load of sliced hot chilis on the top with, and this is notable, the membranes and seed still in them. “Is it too spicy for you?”  “Noooooo.”  Not by a long shot, I thought, but his English was either so bad or so attuned to the English accent that I had already had to mime a few things (I just ran from Oxford, and he didn’t understand that until I faux-ran in place a few steps).  The food knows no language barrier and was delicious no matter what you do with your tongue on a normal basis.

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