So what is Bitten Oxford?
Bitten Oxford is your ultimate Oxford food and drinks guide – with restaurant listings, news, events, recommendations and more. Bitten helps you decide where to eat, and also where not to.
As an independent guide, we include food & drinks venue listings for free within OX1-4, and for any restaurants up to an hour outside of Oxford that we have reviewed. As a new addition to the site, we are now including non-venue food & drink businesses, like producers, catering companies, cookery school and delis. Check out our Food Directory for more information.
The years have been busy! Full of many meals, the Bitten Street food markets, an Oxford Food & Drink Festival, and now a new sister business – Bitten Digital.
Bitten is always candid, nosey and incredibly hungry!
The Bitten Crew
Jacqui – Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Bitten is run by Jacqui Thorndyke, an East Oxford-based food blogger and freelance Digital Media Manager with a love of noodles, dumplings, avocado and sharks. Mum of boys and capable of taking hundreds of food photographs within a single meal, Jacqui ran her first blog, FoodieOnTour, before launching Bitten Oxford in 2013, and Bitten Digital in 2018. You can follow Jacqui on Twitter and Instagram.
Hannah – Deputy Editor
Hannah Bond now has a job in publishing, but in a former life, she trained as a chef and worked as a food blogger and cookery teacher. Along the way, Hannah has baked wedding cakes, made pizzas in a wood-fired oven in a travelling van, done shifts in Michelin-starred restaurants, frosted many thousands of cupcakes for corporate events, and had one very stressful morning as a runner on Saturday Kitchen.
Chloe – Food Writer, West Oxfordshire
Chloe Horner retrained as a cook at Leiths School of Food and Wine in London, going on to start an underground supper club in her house called Oxfork. Oxfork quickly transitioned into a cafe on Magdalen Road in East Oxford. The cafe was sold in 2014, and since then Chloe has had stints cooking at The Magdalen Arms, Natural Bread Company, Silvie, Burford Garden Company, The Potting Shed and The Straw Kitchen. She also cooks for a number of private clients including Annie Sloan and Riverford Organic.
Lucy – Food Writer, Oxford
Lucy Ayrton is a writer and keen amateur cook living in Oxford. She has reviewed for Daily Info and Sabotage Reviews for ten years and had her work featured in The Observer. Lucy also writes performance poetry shows and novels. She teaches writing at the London College of Creative Media.
Katy – Food & Travel Writer
Katy Kelly is a UK hotel-lover based in Oxford. She has a penchant for independent boutique hotels, hotel robes and room service. When she’s not checking in somewhere instagrammable at the weekend – you can find her photographing her brunch and writing about the best food and drink Oxford and the British countryside has to offer. You can read about her hotel addiction at www.thebestvanilla.co.uk
James – Beer Writer
James Henton discovered, more quickly than is friends, that just drinking Fosters is not cool. His beer drinking revaluation started with a craft classic, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and since then has strived to find more and more interesting beers from rosehip saisions to Barrel Aged Stouts.
Holly & Rachel – Food Writers, West Oxfordshire
Couple, Rachel and Holly, live in Witney with their dog Ralphie and spend the majority of their time drinking coffee and exploring the best foodie spots in West Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds.
Liz Wilding – Food Writer, Oxford & Oxfordshire
Liz Wilding navigates life as a continuous adventure in cooking and dining. Now Oxford-based following years of international travel, she jumps at the chance to try new foods and write about these experiences. She also obsesses about really good bread.
Georgia Sparks – Food Writer, Oxford
Georgia Sparks is a huge foodie. In her spare time, she loves to do anything revolving around food be it cook, eat or write about it. She has an Instagram @whatgeorgiacooks where she posts her creations.
Jade Heatley – Food Writer, Bicester
Jade Heatley is a full-time marketing assistant and part-time aspiring food writer & cocktail lover. Not one to be fussy when it comes to food, she has explored everything from Thai street markets to Michelin dining. When she is not persuading loved ones to go out for dinner she can be found in the kitchen; usually cooking 5 times too much and insisting everyone have seconds.
Eloise Stoneman – Food Writer
Eloise Stoneman grew up in Oxford and is currently living in Manchester. She spends much of her free time eating & drinking at various eateries & watering holes. Eloise is also an enthusiastic home cook which she documents on her Instagram @eloiselovesfood. She is so keen on food that even her degree has ‘Food’ in the title!
Daisy Carling-Rose – Food Writer
Daisy Carling-Rose is an Oxford-bred gal living in London, hunting down the best foodie spots for @Bitten_London, and working with Jacqui at @BittenDigital. With a background in content and editorial in the fashion & beauty world, when she’s not tucking into her truffle or carb addiction, she’ll be writing about the latest launches in beauty.
Work With Us!
In addition to free listings, we offer services aimed to help Oxford restaurants reach a wider audience and build their exposure. It isn’t all just for restaurants though… if you’d like to reach an engaged audience of foodies we can help in a number of ways:
- Venue or product reviews
- Sponsored blog posts
- Advertising
- Collaborations
- Social media mentions
- Editorial content
We offer a free listing to all restaurants, bars and cafes in Oxford, from OX1 to OX4. If your venue is not listed and you would like it to be, please get in touch with your details.
To discuss collaborations, advertising and marketing opportunities, book a 20-minute discovery call.
Bespoke Oxford Food Tours
We have run private, bespoke food walking tours around Oxford for organisations upon request. If you would like to organise one of your own, please contact us to arrange.
Contact
Email me jacqui@bittenoxford.co.uk, or use our contact form.
Facebook: bittenoxford
Twitter: bittenoxford
Instagram: bittenoxford
Disclosure
The website costs money to run, and there are hundreds of restaurants to cover. We sometimes accept complimentary meals and invitations to cool events and menu tastings so we can bring you the best content and fresh news. We always retain FULL editorial control and restaurants agree to brutally honest reviews. The rest of our reviews are without advance warning and paid for in full. We don’t wear beards and sunglasses, but we have never been heard to utter the words “don’t you know who I am”, either.
We do not ask for freebies, and if one of our reviews is an invitation or gifted meal, we will ad the words ‘ad – gifted’ or ‘ad – invite’ to our social media posts. Blog posts are categorised in the same way.
All we do is tell you what we think. Our views can differ and restaurants change daily, so our experiences may not reflect yours but at least we’ll be honest about what happened when we went there so you know what to expect!
Bitten sometimes uses affiliate links, and as Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases.