Porterhouse (Greene King)

We visited the kite hoping to try a good range of the XT brewery’s beers. Ultimately it was a bit of a disappointing experience. Of the 8 hand pumps, 2 were given over to cider, another 2 to some Greene King rubbish and another 2 were off, leaving only 2 XT beers to try. Both of which were average. There should have been a keg beer from XT’s Animal range, but that was off as well. Beer aside, it’s a nice cosy traditional boozer with friendly staff and a decent atmosphere. Not worth going out of your way to visit.

This is a community based local pub with the major advantage of only being a 3 minute walk from the Railway Station, even if it is the wrong side of the track. We have visited a few times before in its various guises but the Greene King ownership had put us off for quite a while. Now with XT leasing it off G.K we are likely to visit much more. Basically it is a large single room, the bar is on the right towards the back with plenty of tables and chairs to be had, even on busy nights. On this visit only 2 of the taps had beers on, which was pretty disappointing. Hoping for better.

We visited The Kite on Saturday 30th January 2016. I think that despite all of our years living in and around Oxford this was the first time that we’d stepped in here. The Kite is a large, most attractive looking corner pub, it’s essentially a back street local that is close to the station that dates back to 1899-1900. If you were coming from the station or town head under the railway bridge (you are heading away from town) then turn left at the first opportunity, just for orientation purposes there is a large rather sad looking hotel on the LH side and a Youth Hostel on the RH side, once you see these look for that left turn that will take you down Mill Street it is 2 mins down here on the RH side.

On entering the bar is off to your right, there is seating off to the left and it’s got a roomy spacious feel to it. There is a good selection of beers here though predominantly cask offerings and mostly from the XT and Animal range though I Recall there being a Cornish beer from a smaller brewery that I was unfamiliar with. XT Red Kite is presumably brewed for the pub, Animal Manta Ray, XT 15 English IPA, etc. Back to the pub itself, stripped back walls leaving exposed brickwork, simply furnished, a good cross section of folk i.e. locals, old and young folk, dogs I liked it, it had a nice feel. I never really explored this place but I would definitely come here again, friendly staff, good ambience, really pleasant pub.