Reviewer roasts top restaurant

But when Jayne and Jonathan Wright return to the Woodstock Road venue on Wednesday, they will find one newspaper review hard to stomach.

AA Gill, once famously ejected from a Gordon Ramsay establishment with film star Joan Collins, did not have a kind word to say about his visit to La Gousse d'Ail in his Sunday Times review.

Jayne and Jonathan Wright

He labelled the restaurant, formerly The Lemon Tree, the "Penelope Keith memorial show home", a "refectory of awfulness", and awarded it the one-star 'Roadkill' rating.

Mr Gill was particularly offended by a starter: cream of haricot blancs, roasted garlic, pan-fried frogs' legs, fricasee of snails, Scottish girolles, and parsley jus.

"This appalling blind-man's-deli-shoplifting-spree came on a single plate", he wrote.

Mr Gill even baulked at the price of his meal, £13 for a starter and £26 for the main course.

"I count it as one of the luckiest moves of my life that I resisted the five-course menu gourmand at £85," he added.

The restaurant is currently closed for refurbishment but Helen Shayler, a spokesman for Mr and Mrs Wright, said they would be disappointed by the review.

"A lot of loyal customers have telephoned to say how unfair they thought it was.

"Other London reviewers have visited and have written much more positive things. Mr Gill's review seems to stand alone", she said.

When Chris Gray, restaurant reviewer for the Oxford Mail and The Oxford Times, visited in January, he praised La Gousse d'Ail as "the brightest star in Oxford's gastronomic firmament, a temple of haute cuisine".

His positive review is backed up by other favourable reports in The Independent, the Guardian, The Evening Standard and Harpers & Queen.

"I think Gill has gone completely over the top," said Mr Gray.

"He is firmly in the business of self-promotion and, of course, taking a deliberate swipe at Oxford's best restaurant is designed to show us all what a thorough wag he is."