Quod occupies the ground floor of the Old Bank Hotel, right on Oxford's High Street. It is the sort of place where a quick coffee turns into a long lunch, the room filling with noise and light off the tall windows. If you are spending a day in Oxford, this is where we'd send you.
The building used to be a bank, and you can feel it: high ceilings, stone columns, a sense of generous scale that most Oxford restaurants lack. Quod fills that space with a cheerful, slightly Mediterranean energy. The menu runs through European brasserie classics (steak frites, risotto, good salads, a reliable burger) without trying too hard to impress. It is not the most inventive cooking in the city, but that is not really the point. The point is a well-run room, a glass of something cold, and a table by the window looking out at the passing parade of cyclists and academics.
We tend to go for lunch rather than dinner. The light is better, the pace is easier, and it sits well between a morning at the Ashmolean or the Bodleian and an afternoon wandering the colleges. Booking is worth doing, especially at weekends; the terrace tables in summer go fast. From the cottage it is about a 35-minute drive into the centre, and the Westgate car park puts you a short walk away.
“Lunchtime Quod is one of those Oxford rituals that just works. Big room, simple food, a glass of white, and nowhere you need to be afterwards.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.