City Grocery is the restaurant on the Square that has done as much as any single place to put Oxford on the food map. Opened in 1992 by the chef John Currence — a James Beard winner and one of the early generation of Southern chefs who took regional cooking seriously — the restaurant occupies a long, plain dining room in an old 19th-century grocery building.
The menu is contemporary Southern: shrimp and grits done about as well as anywhere in the state, a respectable burger, a regular rotation of game dishes in season. The upstairs bar is one of the better drinking rooms in town and is open later than the dining room. Reservations are necessary on weekends and football Saturdays; the bar is first-come.