May is local history and community month. Oxford certainly has more than its share of history, it is literally everywhere and one thing that is guaranteed to start a discussion with a flood of memories, is asking locals what their favourite restaurants used to be. With that in mind and a long mental list of places I miss regularly, I asked around to see which Oxford restaurants of the past were missed…
The first place to be mentioned from pretty much everyone of a certain age was Bretts Burgers. Back in the days before Said Business School and Frideswides Square, when a car tyre place occupied the old LMS railway station, there was a small green shed, from which emitted the most dribble inducing smells of charred meat, freshly fried chips with generous lashings of salt and vinegar. Bretts was the place to go, whether it was on your way home from work or the pub and for me, it had to be a burger with aioli. Just make sure whoever you were taking home ate the same mouth-tingling garlic! For a while, there was a Bretts on the Cowley Road too, but it never reached the same dizzy heights of the train station shed. Many a tear was shed when Bretts finally closed its doors.
A close second to Bretts is, or was, Peppers Burgers in Jericho. Another venue that chargrilled its meat patties to order, there were queues out the door most nights of the week. Living in the pub next door, I was a regular and sampled pretty much every sauce they did, always accompanied with a paper-wrapped bundle of steaming vinegary fries. Peppers is still going now, but they do pizzas too which seems wrong to me! A friend recently posted on Facebook the definitive question, Bretts or Peppers? I’d choose Bretts, as did many of the other responders but they were all happy that we now have Atomic Burgers to sate our need for burgery goodness! There was also a few memories shared of the old Wimpy in St Giles, which was on the corner of Pusey Street, where the Oxfam bookshop now is. Of course, that’s just a few doors away from St Giles Cafe, no longer a tobacco-stained greasy spoon!
I remember Wimpy being in Cornmarket Street where Burger King now is, the front left of the restaurant was given over to Baskin Robbins 31 Flavours – the height of fine dining for a kid whose ice-cream highlight had previously been an Arctic Roll!
Going back even earlier, what is now HMV had been a haberdashery and before that, it was the Cadena, with a bakery on the ground floor and upstairs a proper palm court tea room with a string quartet playing in the afternoons. Or there was the Carfax Tea Rooms on Cornmarket, now Pret a Manger, to be served tea by ladies in black dresses with white broderie Anglais aprons and headbands. If you didn’t fancy being quite as proper, you could have had your pie and a scoop of mash at Crawfords in Queen Street, a restaurant owned by a local family that has now become Maxwells. Crawfords was the place you would go to as a teenager in the late 50s, early 60s to share lingering glances over your ice cream sundae!
Jumping forward a few decades, teenagers in the 80s would meet on their way to or from the ice rink at the oddly popular Don Millers! A bakery with a damn good line in sugary jam doughnuts, hot chips in cones with a puddle of vinegar at the bottom and sausage rolls with suspiciously pink fillings, it would be full of kids in their pastel polo shirts, Sergio Tacchini light jackets artfully arranged off the shoulders and BK trainers. Not that much different to the current tenant in that spot – BHS!
Over the road from Don Millers, around where the Levi store is, was a stereotypical French bistro. Underground, it had the ubiquitous checked tablecloths, wine bottles with candles in and stuck in my mind as being the first place I ever ate frogs legs!
Back a generation to when Restaurant Elizabeth in St Aldates was regarded as THE best restaurant in Oxford, now Shanghai 30s. It had started as a French fine dining eatery in the mid 1950s and in 1966 the owner moved on, leaving the restaurant in the extremely capable hands of his Spanish head waiter, Antonio Lopez who brought a more Mediterranean menu and kept the restaurant as a pinnacle of fine dining in Oxford for more than thirty years.
At the other end of town in the 1970s, a new era of fine dining was to begin as Raymond Blanc opened his first restaurant Les Quat Saisons. That restaurant was so successful, he decided to open a little place in the country, with bedrooms. We all know how that turned out! Staying in Summertown, La Dolce Vita was a dated Italian restaurant that became Florios and is now The Oxford Kitchen.
Students went for dinner at Luna Caprese for many years, my boss remembers taking dates there when he was a student a few decades ago and Samantha Shannon, a successful author who graduated from St Anne’s last year also has fond memories of it. A fellow food blogger doesn’t have such good memories and judging by what she found in her dessert, it may have been a good time for that one to close. A new restaurant is in the process of moving in, and as always we will keep you informed!
Into Jericho, where the Big Bang no longer exists. It is of course in its new home at the Oxford Castle, but that just doesn’t feel the same… Jericho was renowned not so much for its food, with the exception of the aforementioned Peppers everywhere else was standard Indian restaurants, but for its pubs. Back when I was growing up in Jericho, there was pretty much a pub on every corner of those terraced streets. Nowadays, there’s the Rickety Press, but then it was the Radcliffe Arms with Bob and Ann as the landlords and the biggest Alsatian dog I’ve ever known, Brandy. Across the street was the Harcourt Arms, which hasn’t changed much at all, and down a bit was the Globe. Then there was the Bakers, the Carpenters Arms, the New Inn, the Crown and the Plough & Anchor. The Bookbinders is thankfully still going and was always worth a stop off on a Friday night for their meat raffle. Back out onto Walton Street and there was the Walton Ale Stores, the Lord Napier in Observatory Street and the Horse and Jockey on Woodstock Road. Good times!
The Varsity Club in the High Street was until recently a pretty dodgy nightclub/bar but prior to that, it was a pretty good bistro and cocktail bar known as Hemingways, the late-80s to mid-90s. Going back further it was Burlington Bertie’s, cocktails, milkshakes, burgers and wonderful garlic mushrooms! Over the road is the old police station in Kemp Hall, now housing Chiang Mai. Between the police and the Thai, there was the Kemp Hall Tea Rooms, an Anglo-Chinese restaurant, an Indian and then La Sorbonne for over twenty years. Widely regarded as the second best restaurant in Oxford, just beaten by Restaurant Elizabeth, its first chef was Raymond Blanc who left to set up that restaurant in Summertown!
Other places gone but not forgotten, include the original Opium Den, which is now Nando’s, Gashi Gashi, Munchie Munchie in Park End Street, Lan Kwai Fong and La Capannina which then became Fratellis and is now Atomic Pizzas!
** UPDATE I’ve now discovered that Bretts Burgers is alive and well and housed in a mobile military bomb disposal unit but serving burgers at events in and around Guildford! Only tasting will tell if it lives up to the memories, the addition of truffle and parmesan fries does make me wonder… You can find out more at www.brettsburger.com
Does anyone remember the Italian restaurant below Millets in Queen Street in the70s? There was a coffee bar above called Fantasia but I can’t remember the name of the Italian
I think it was La Cantina di Capri 34 Queen street.
It was an excellent restaurant fantastic food and entertaining service. I was heartbroken when it disappeared.
Loved it. Was the first really good Italian restaurant that I had visited.
It was a treat for somene’s 21st, and I was 20.
Great food and table service.
The date was 1970.
Tell me I’m wrong but I remember it as Brets (with one T)? I went there often enough, perfectly placed for when you got off the train home, and I wholeheartedly endorse everything you say about it… You might also mention WHY it closed (went up in flames one night)- always going to happen…wooden shed, huge flames off the grill. Probably a reason it was only a few hundred yards from the fire station.
I guess you were off school the day they explained the difference between it’s and its, and who’s and whose, eh?
The Brets ‘chain’ in this area was named with a single ‘T’. There were 4 altogether: 2 in Oxford, and restaurants in Reading and Swindon. I worked at the Cowley road branch before opening the Reading shop with Steve Williams in 1979. The ‘shack’ at the railway stn in Oxford holds great memories and we even served the (now) Lord Adonis when he studied in Oxford. The Guildford Brett’s is an independent shop with a double ‘t’. Good times!
Hi Mike
Steve Williams here, I am just finalising a lease in Witney to reinvent Brets burgers,do you by any chance have any pictures of the outlets at ether of Oxford or Reading or Swindon.
Get in touch anyway
07711844289
Crikey,i remember the Cowley Rd branch in the 70s as we had our own shop at 25 (now kazbar)… I think that too went up in flames.
I say Bretts with 2 Ts for sure. I was always at the one in Cowley Road and the aioli was the one to go for, but closely followed by the Hawaiian and/or the Blue Cheese. Yes, the one at the station did indeed burn down and the Cowley Road branch closed down very shorlly afterwards. I missed these gastronomic delights so much that I drove more than once on a Saturday evening with friends on a 100 mile round trip, just to pick one up.
I also have found reference to a phoenix-like rise of Bretts somewhere in the Guildford area (about 5 miles from where I now live)… happy days!)
Anyone remember the Pak Fook? Almost next door to the Penultimate Picture Palace – a Chinese takeaway but with some bench seating for rough n ready eating in. I must have gone there two or three times and even when five of us turned up, we still had no chance of finishing the set meal for three. Literally mountaions of food.
Yes to Pak Fook they came to the poly to cater for the Chinese Society’s new year dinner. My friend and I were guests, we felt really honoured
I lived in Oxford from 1975 to about 1982. For quite a bit of the time I lived in Jeune Street, and regularly ate at the Pak Fook. I was a student, (most of the time) and I am sure I didn’t have much money, but I regularly ate at the Pak Fook. All food tastes better when one is young, but I think that it was genuinely tasty.
I am sure there was a Wimpey not far from the Eagle and Child, where I’d grab a burger occasionally: not exactly haute cuisine, but perfectly OK for the odd emergency snack. I’d watched the (original) Peter Cook and Dudley Moore version of Bedazzled, in which Moore was a burger chef, so I had a vaguely favourable view of the chain.
I remember a great fuss about the proposal to open the first McDonald’s in Oxford. It wasn’t as ubiquitous then as it is now, and I didn’t really understand what the problem was, as there were already plenty of burger joints, so having an American chain didn’t seem desperately problematic.
Does anyone remember the name of the pizza/pasta place that was on Little Clarendon Street in the mid/late 80s. It was on the right as you headed towards Walton Street in the same section as Duke of Cambridge. It was there around the same time as Sylvester’s, Tumi, Oasis Trading, Oriental Crafts, Clothkits etc.
Clarey’s! The best pizza ever xx
I worked there, first as dishwasher, then as barman, for several years in the 1980s, and would love to hear from any other long-term inmates! e.g., Mark, who used to manage the restaurant? ( j.m.preston at reading dot ac dot uk ) John
Great Pizza. Must have been on of the first pizza restaurants in Oxford? Wasn’t it a Chicago style pizza restaurant? I was a teenager when we used to eat there.
Trying to remember name of indian reataurant near the moonlight on cowley road. Thanks.
The Kashmir. I remember it having green signage.
I am trying to remember the Nightclub (I think it was also a casino) on the first floor on a corner in Summertown in the 70’s. I think it may have had a Chinese influence !!
As a student at OXPENS and Oxford Polytechnic (now a University) Brets was simply the best burger place on the planet and even now has never been beaten … or is it rose tinted glasses – I think not !!
I remember Brets at the station. Commuting between Reading and Warwick in the mid 90s, if I’d worked late in the office I had to change at Oxford in the late evening, with a 20-odd minute wait, just enough to get over to Brets and wait for my burger to be cooked. It was SOOOO much better than any train or station food on offer! The little hut was invariably staffed by a Dutchman on weekday evenings at the time, I can’t remember his name unfortunately but idle chatter one evening while he was grilling my burger drifted onto transport matters. To paraphrase: “Hey, they should have the bus station right next to the rail station. I don’t understand why they don’t integrate transport here like we do in Holland. It’s obvious really but what do I know, I’m just a humble burger seller. . . ” Well it looks like that Dutch vision for Oxford’s transport facilities might be fulfilled some quarter of a century or more later with recent announcements concerning the station redevelopment masterplan and relocation of the bus station. Perhaps he’d had a word with Lord Adonis all those years ago!
As a student in the early 80s, my friends and I loved the Pak Fook and also the Dutch Pancake House, near the station. The Wheatsheaf Pub used to do fabulous grills.
When we were students in Oxford, we went to Chit-Chats Italian restaurant for our first date. It was upstairs just opposite Martyrs’ Memorial. Today is the 36th anniversary of that first date in 1984. We married and lived in Oxford for a further 3 years. During those years, yes, Brets/Bretts was fantastic – and nearby, Go Dutch pancake house. Brown’s was popular with students, but we only went once. The Opium Den and Paddyfields were two great Chinese restaurants. Sweeny Todd’s was a nice diner-type place. We went only for their wonderful ice cream with hot chocolate fudge sauce. there was also an upstairs Indian restaurant at the top of The High street near Carfax called ‘The Indian Garden’ where my wife almost expired after attempting a chicken phall. there was a wonderful little tea shop which did delicious hot chocolate – cream topped and sprinkled with cinnamon – called ‘the Nosebag’. I know Chit-Chats has closed, but some of the others may still be open. Happy days!
When I asked for the phall at Indian Garden, the waiter helpfully told me it was ‘inedible and shouldn’t be on the menu!’ Not to be outdone I did have one some time later at one of the Indian places opposite the bingo hall on Cowley Road…
Chit Chats !!! That cafe on Broad Street? My wife also been trying to remember a place where she had her first chicken cacciatore…… !:)
I remember chitchats so well, the waiter used to come round with a massive pepper pot which felt very sophisticated! I was there 1990-93 – also the nosebag and Indian Garden. We used to go to the Prince of Bengal on Cowley Road which I thought was magical with its little blue velvet booths and sitar music, never been in such an atmospheric curry house. Towards the end of my student days we liked the Mongolian Wok Bar where you could take whatever food you liked in little bowls and have it cooked in front of you. Wow did we eat our moneys worth. The Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House on Cowley Rd was legendary for having no menu and prices but I was always terrified we’d be charged at the high end! And I always envied my posh friends at Magdalen who went to Parmenters every day for sundried tomato ciabatta
I remember The Prince of Bengal restaurant on Cowley Road and the velvet blue decor! It was my favorite Indian take out place during my time as a grad student at Oxford in 1991-1992 when I lived on Iffley Road.
Bretts is reopening, but in Witney, by one of the original founders from 1979. However the name is now changed to Brets. I am guessing one of the other founders owns the rights to the Bretts name.
https://www.facebook.com/BretsBurgers/
My Dad who sadly past away in 2012 used to run and own La Cantina Di Capri in Queen Street. I would love to know more about it from anyone who visited.. my email is aespositoprv@gmail.com
I went there a couple of times but can’t remember much detail at this point. It was downstairs, below street level. It was too expensive for me as a student but I remember having a fabulous chateaubriand there as a guest. Along with La Sorbonne, Bleu Blanc Rouge, Saraceno and The Elizabeth it was one of the places undergraduates might be taken when their parents were in town!
You mentioned my two favourite places in Cowley rd during 1980-83, pak fook and bretts (also near the railway station). Blue cheese and aioli at bretts, meal for two for a fiver at pak fook (best spare ribs ever!).
Our family remembers a restaurant called Caribbean Blue on the Cowley Road in the 80s. Anyone else?
Does anyone remember an Italian restaurant downstairs off Magdalen St near the top of George St? I think it’s nowanightclub called Fever !
It was called Il Saraceno, I think. Our family’s favourite restaurant for birthdays.
I loved Saraceno and had some superb birthday dinners there.
There used to be a place somewhere upstairs on Cornmarket St in the 80’s but cannot remember the name.
I used to work at Go Dutch Pancake Restaurant nr the station in the early 80s and friend Angie also ay the Poly worked at the Bretts shack nr station
Go Dutch was great, man and woman owner-managers I recall. I went there often from 1979 onwards. The sets of pans were swapped over once a month or thereabouts and had to be cleaned with wallpaper stripper! [You wash pans as little as possible when cooking pancakes of course]. Sometimes I found room for a sweet one at the end!
The old Capannina at 247 Cowley Road was the Fulbrook Farm until 1960. My father owned it and we lived above. I went to Oxford Poly 1970/73 and ate there when I took out a girlfriend. The student eatery a few doors down was the Continental run by Pepe, a really good guy.
Hi Paul
Pepe is my dad, now 90 y.o. and often reminiscing about the restaurant.
I will pass your lively comments onto him, he will be so chuffed.
My mum continues to cook all her meals from scratch, she is also 90!
In 1971 we had lunch at an upstairs restaurant that specialized in dishes featuring variations on Spam. Am I imagining it? I can still see the typewritten menu–Spam fritters, I believe were among the offerings.
Am I the only one to remember Colonel Bogey’s in Oxford ? An American style restaurant. Can’t remember the street it was in but i think i remember it being upstairs somewhere. Was our favourite along with The OpiumDen.
Was this what became Maxwell’s? On Queen Street.
From my recollection it was just called Bogey’s, and I always thought it was named after Humphrey Bogart. We used to go there quite often c. 1975-6. It was upstairs not far from the Covered Market. There was room to dance, it was sort of a late-night hang.
I remember the Rimini in St Clements think it ended up as a pine furniture shop
I worked two weeks at Rimini to help the manager.was so quiet but the food was so good the chef made great bread usi g his own grown garlic.happy student days.Think the owner was Mr tosti?
Does anyone remember The Blue Coyote on St Clements, an ‘upmarket’ Tex Mex, c.1991? I recall as an undergraduate thinking we were ever so decadent and sophisticated going there for long Sunday Lunches and kicking off with martinis…. There appear to have been two fish restaurants on the site more recently
I was in a very noisy rock band in the 1980s around Oxford, and the two PA guys worked at Brets.
They were called Yellow Line and a great pair of chaps!
Does anyone remember the name of the baked potatoes place at the Plain end of Cowley Road?
It’s now a house with no shop
I loved the pancakes at Go Dutch they were really good; in fact, I once went to a birthday party there and ate all the leftover pancakes and earned myself the nickname pancake.
There was a great attempt to reinvent the burger in the covered market, it was called Snorkers and they were long rectangular burgers in a bun like a hotdog; they were really tasty, I don’t remember how long they lasted
I loved Munchy Munchy in parkend street, first went there in the late 80’s as a kid and later worked there for a couple of years part time. Still miss the food. Great memories.
Spud-u-like rings a bell
It was definitely spud-u-like! On the end of Cowley Rd when I lived in the Waynflete building opposite
Munchy Munchy was my favourite restaurant in Oxford when I was an undergraduate there in the early 80s; a short menu on the whiteboard, but the food was reliably superb.
Thank you for the reminder, Munchy Munchy was fabulous. Canteen-style, queuing up the stairs. Just three dishes to choose from, each described in detail on the whiteboard, in tiny near-indecipherable handwriting that you could only read just as you reached the point where you had to make your decision. No prevaricating allowed, the challenge was to avoid accidentally going for the super red-hot option. No licence, so fruit juice and lassi to drink. Low prices. Absolutely delicious. A very fond memory from the early ‘80s, I suppose the closest these days is the lunchtime food stalls in Gloucester Green.
My favourite restaurant of all time. I think the owners moved to California in the end and opened up a restaurant there
Does anyone remember the name of an Italian Restaurant upstairs in Cornmarket just past the old Woolworths? I worked there as a schoolgirl around 1963, Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes. Lovely people and great fun!
(Unfortunately I gave this name as the answer to a security question ‘my first job’ and now I cant remember it!)
I think it was called Alfred’s.I had a friend who worked there and we used to go to Baedakers after shift
Hi Raymond Blanc trained at La Sorbonne but he wasn’t its first chef. In fact he was hired as a waiter! André Chavagnon was the chef patron of La Sorbonne and he went on to open Ma Cuisine on the Cowley Road after La Sorbonne closed.
Akash Dial A Curry on the Cowley Rd? Once came with a piece of w… actually scrub that, they may still be around!
But even better, Hi Lo Jamaican Eating House? My first experience of Crucial Brew, which means I can’t remember what we ate.
I loved Go Dutch in the mid-80s but it’s two cafes I feel most nostalgic for: Rosie Lee’s on the High Street (great cream tea) and the Wycombe Coffee Shop on Holywell Street (buttered crumpets and Earl Grey). I looked it up recently and I think it’s now some kind of printshop.
Rosie’s is still there as a tea shop but a bit different to when it first opened. The Wykeham Coffee Shop, just opposite New College, became a tiny Japanese restaurant. Great loss as it was a favourite haunt of students and they did lovely toasted sandwiches.
I loved Go Dutch. I was introduced to it by some Dutch graduate students and never looked back. Good times.
Our favourite Chinese restaurant was the Peninsula in George Street. (near Ask) it started upstairs as the Golden palace, changed name to Peninsula and then later moved directly below ground. It was very popular with great food and staff. I’m surprised it wasn’t on the best list.
Also the Golden Cross which was a Bernie Inn in Cornmarket street was really nice
Hi there I know it’s a real long shot but I’m trying to find out the name of a small pasta takeaway outlet that used to be in the Westgate centre in Oxford near BHS. I don’t think it was there long and we are taking about 40 years ago.
Many thanks
Was it near Ourprice records near Sainsbury’s?
What was the cafe behind Square Books