Vegan Review: Spurtle and Spoon at Barefoot Oxford

I need to make a retraction. I wrote only a handful of posts ago that reviewing a bowl of oatmeal would be ‘a bit much’. I was wrong. This week I went for breakfast with some friends from work at the newly launched Spurtle and Spoon pop-up breakfast bar, hosted at Barefoot Oxford in Jericho, and the experience was definitely good enough to share.

The kitchen opened at 8am, and mostly due to being at the mercy of the timings of public transport, we were those super keen people waiting outside the shop front before they were quite ready. In any case, it gave us some time to consider what we were going to order – on offer from Spurtle and Spoon was a variety of overnight oat bowls, homemade granola, or sourdough toast with a couple of choices of toppings. Barefoot also have an absolutely beautiful display of freshly baked cakes, and when is cake for breakfast not a great idea? So that was an option too, and I believe they always have at least one vegan option, that morning’s being a very pretty looking courgette cake (see, it would’ve even almost been healthy!).

After a little deliberation, I went for an overnight oats bowl made with dairy-free milk, topped with raspberries, toasted coconut and a spoonful of nut butter. It said on the menu that it came with cashews, but I had an epiphany about four hours later when looking at my photos, that the cashews were in fact nowhere to be found. However, they were pretty generous with the toppings and as it completely passed me by at the time, I think I can let them off. The bowls were particularly Instagram-worthy, coming with a sprinkle of freeze dried raspberries and rose petals too.

It was a really tasty and comforting bowl of food, perfect for these spring/summer days when the weather isn’t quite sure what it’s doing. The oats themselves tasted like they weren’t sweetened, and when I make overnight oats myself I usually grate an apple or add a bit of dairy-free yoghurt, so it tasted slightly different from what I’m used to. The ample toppings mixed in gave it plenty of flavour though, and Becky said that hers topped with banana and cacao was really tasty too. These were huge bowls of oatmeal, enough to keep me going until 2pm (apart from a handful of strawberries as a mid-morning office snack, which I ate because they were there, despite feeling ridiculously full). I have a pretty fast metabolism, also known as greediness, so that’s quite unheard of for me.

With the oats and a pot of breakfast tea, my order came to a very reasonable £6.50. We all said we’d like to go back again as the food was great and we’d like to try some of the other options on the menu. I think we might make going out for breakfast a more regular occurrence, because it’s the best meal of the day in my opinion, and what nicer way to start off a day that has to be spent in the office?