Oxford Restaurants Earn Honor of Best College Town Food

Photo courtesy of City Grocery

Oxford is known for its small town Southern charm with dozens of delicious restaurants on every block, and the nation’s food critics are starting to learn of our secrets.

Oxford is most known for being the home of the flagship University of Mississippi, and all of those students have to eat somewhere. Luckily, Oxford looks beyond the drive-thrus and pizza places that drive most college dining, offering tons of local fare for all price ranges.

Yahoo! Food listed the best cities for all kinds of food groups, and Oxford made the list for Best College Town Food.

With its classic town Square, football stadium that can house the permanent-resident population three times over, and claim of that fancy school in England as a namesake, Oxford is the epitome of a teensy college town. Yet, its students — and population of 20,000 — have five restaurants from John Currence, a James Beard award-winning chef, ranging from the Square’s decadent City Grocery to Big Bad Breakfast, a hangover-killer of a morning joint that consistently has a multi-hour wait.

But Currence isn’t the only food magnate in town: Ajax Diner, also on the Square, is a meat-and-three soul-food joint that has one of the best college burgers in the country and ladles out mac ’n’ cheese better than any Southern mom out there. Taylor Grocery is another spot with a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet and ample knowledge of catfish and fried oysters.

And if, despite all that fried food, you managed to forget you’re in the South, Ole Miss is home to the Southern Foodways Alliance, a group dedicated to chronicling and preserving the history and culture of Southern food.

Other Southern towns that made the list were Nashville for Best Fried Chicken, New Orleans for Best Late-Night Food, Louisville for Best Up-and-Coming Food City, Dallas for Best Fast Food, and Austin for Best Barbecue.

With all of this amazing food in our backyard, it’s amazing we’re all still as beautiful as we are!

Amelia Camurati is editor-in-chief of HottyToddy.com and can be reached at amelia.camurati@hottytoddy.com.