For a town this size, Oxford eats remarkably well. Much of the food scene runs through one chef's network — John Currence, who has been cooking and opening restaurants here since the early 1990s and who has done as much as anyone to anchor a Southern-food tradition in the town. His three places — City Grocery, Snackbar, and Big Bad Breakfast — are the obvious starting points and are all worth a visit.
For cheap, fast, properly Southern food, Ajax Diner on the Square is the long-standing local meat-and-three. Saint Leo off the Square serves wood-fired pizza in a converted historic building and is the best date-night spot in town. Bouré is a New Orleans-inflected restaurant on Van Buren that does an excellent gumbo. Most of the better restaurants take reservations and almost all of them are impossible to walk into on a football Saturday.