Sebastiaan Evans

A good steak dinner is one of those meals that sounds simple but is surprisingly hard to get right. The meat matters, obviously, but so does the cut, the ageing, the cooking, and the setting. Oxfordshire is not short of places that put a steak on the menu, but the places that do it properly, with well-sourced beef and the kitchen skill to match, are fewer than you might expect. Steak at The Old Crown At The Ballroom Restaurant, our approach to steak reflects our approach to everything else:...

There was a time when vegetarian dining in an Oxfordshire pub meant a mushroom risotto or a goat's cheese tart that had clearly been on the menu since 2006. That time has passed. The county's better kitchens now treat vegetable-led cooking as an opportunity rather than an afterthought, and several are doing it exceptionally well. How We Approach It at The Old Crown At The Ballroom Restaurant, our menu changes every six to eight weeks, and there are always multiple vegetarian dishes that...

Oxford has a lot going for it, but a relaxed pub lunch is not among the city's greatest strengths. The pubs inside the ring road are either tourist traps charging London prices for average food, or genuinely good but heaving with students. The better option is to drive 20 to 30 minutes out of the city, where the Oxfordshire countryside is home to some of the finest pub dining in England. Here are the ones worth knowing about. The Old Crown Coaching Inn, Faringdon We are biased, obviously, but...