The Oxford Arms in Cherwell

A Fantastic Sunday Lunch! From the moment we walked in, we were greeted with warm hospitality and a cosy atmosphere that set the tone for a relaxing meal. The roast was exceptional – perfectly cooked meat (I recommend the pork belly), crispy roast potatoes, a generous helping of seasonal vegetables and a rich, flavourful gravy! The pub itself has a charming, welcoming vibe, and the staff couldn't have been friendlier or more attentive! We’ll definitely be returning!!

Pretty poor experience in here today. We had booked ahead and required two high chairs. The food was quick to come out but tepid at best. One of the waiters must have tripped over one of the high chairs at least 5 times, each time our one year old was getting more and more upset as she was getting shunted into the table. We had tried to move the chair in as far as it could go but ultimately we could only work with space provided. To summarise don't come here with children and for the money you'd definitely expect better food. Some of the staff were lovely though.

We came here for a roast dinner and took the dog. It's a really cosy pub with a stove fire place and very friendly resident dog. The food was very tasty and came quickly. I had the vegetarian roast. Staff were attentive and helpful. Can't fault the place. This is our little meeting spot as a family so we'll definitely be popping in again.

Brilliant food and atmosphere! Great selection on the and generous portion sizes, we absolutely loved our Sunday lunch today, we went with friends and they also really loved it. The wine is also delicious. Perfect dog friendly pub with amazing food. Would highly reccomend.

Very nice. A well executed and beautiful village pub. We had Sunday lunch on a rainy October day. Restaurant was busy but swift service and plenty of space. We had roast - beef and vegetarian wellington. Both very good. My only change would be to offer swede and parsnip mash rather than the sauce. We had a couple of glasses of very nice Merlot. All in all a good Sunday lunch in a nice location. Plenty of parking.

We met up with friends here for Sunday Lunch. It's a really nice and buzzy village pub with great food and service. Would recommend!

We were fortunate enough to find The Oxford Arms close to my daughter’s wedding venue. From the first enquiry, Scott was professional, responsive and guided us through all the options required to make a booking for her post wedding meet up the day after their wedding. With around 90 guests, we were advised to book out the whole pub. Every detail was noted and Scott and his team, arranged a beautiful buffet, fine wine selection, plus teas and coffees. Service was prompt, yet discreet and totally chilled. Fortunately the sun shone for us and we made full use of the gorgeous gardens. Nothing was too much trouble and everyone without exception had an amazing time. This was an unusually large event for the pub, but they delivered on every level. Thank you all for the time you invested to ensure that Rebecca, Ben and all our friends and family had a memorable day with you. We will be sure to recommend The Oxford Arms and hope to visit the next time we are in the area.

Had breakfast Plates were cold. Food cooled to quickly to eat warm

A little gem in the Oxfordshire countryside. Friendly staff and good food at reasonable prices. Good selection of beers and wines too. Well worth a visit, but best if you book in advance.

The Oxford Arms is great! My wife and I were getting married locally and used The Oxford Arms on the Friday eve before the wedding and Sunday lunch after the wedding. On Friday Scott and his team catered for 25 of us, they were great and made the experience very easy and relaxed. On Sunday we came with very short notice and they welcomed us all in. Great pub, great food and great people. Thank you Scott and team for all the help!

Proper old pub ideal for a slap up feed. Well kept beer too. Deposit needed for larger bookings.

Traditional pub, with traditional pub grub. We had a group of 15 here and they hosted us perfectly. Great atmosphere inside and would recommend if you’re in the area. The vegan curry or fish & chips were particularly popular

Nice village pub and reasonably priced

Had a lovely pizza and the best chips ever. Was a very Nice atmosphere, and had the friendliest staff. Can’t wait to go back.

Lovely food, really enjoyed it. Have been a few times now and it does not disappoint. The portions are really good and everything comes out beautifully presented. The menu has lots of options and caters for everyone. Highly recommended.

Lovely village pub with great food and drinks, service is fantastic from Tori and Scott

Really nice village pub with garden. Very good food, drink & service!

Visited the Oxford Arms with family from Australia. Our father's grew up in Kirtlington so we just had to visit the old stomping ground. In my minds eye, I could see my Nan sitting in the corner.

Very nice meal in cosy inn .Good choice of food. Friendly staff and also dog friendly. Nice chilled ambience would definitely return .Very easy to find as on main street.

Lovely traditional pub. Called in for a light lunch after walking from Greenhill Leisure park along the canal path. Good beers and great food with friendly service. Had the Antipasti sharing board and pardon peppers between us. Nice quiet sunny garden.

An excellent pub. A really good atmosphere with very helpful staff. Great food from quite a comprehensive menu. Good beer!!

We are staying locally and wanted to find a place for our Sunday lunch and this was recommend. Booked a table and made plans around that time. Arrived early and were able to get our table early, selection of food was limited but I enjoyed mine. Others in our party were not keen on the beef as it was very red. Everything else was great from service to atmosphere, would highly recommend but they need more selections for Sunday lunch as only beef was a slight letdown.

Typical English pub, very cousy and welcoming, food quality is high and the staff is very kind. Would absolutely recommend it.

Fantastic pub with great live music 😃

Great little pub, and busy atmosphere. Managed to get a table in the garden, and menu is 'classic British Pub' options. Slightly high proce for quality of product, but nice service. Limited iPA options at the bar tho'

Great food. Great service. Great atmosphere. A tadge expensive but well worth a visit 👍

2nd visit and yet another amazing meal - brilliant pizza and great service. The garden is lovely and inside is cozy. Takeaway wraps looked incredible!

Our waitress was lovely. I suspect short staffed. Very busy. Waited a while for food. However, delicious and worth the wait.

Great food and atmosphere, love coming here for drinks or food. The staff and other guests are so friendly, I always feel welcome.

Had pizzas a few weeks back and they were excellent So a few weeks later I decided to take my family who were visiting from South Africa. The pub had gone down hill. Terrible table in the back too dark to see anything. Service ad hoc. Pizzas soggy. Found it difficult to find someone to pay the pay the bill so we could get our. Won’t be going back. Big pity.

Very nice place to go very friendly

Good food in a really nice pub. We really enjoyed it.

No more than ok. Not terrible but not somewhere I would rush back to. I think there’s other places offering better food at the same price. Overpriced for what it offers. Service wasn’t great, slightly terse.

Great food, friendly service, plenty of parking available, good atmosphere. The food selection is a good variety, and they do add and remove items every now and then. It can be a little bit pricey, but I'd consider it decent value for the area. The only slight negative point would be that the food can sometimes take a little while but it's worth it.

Extensive menu Not inexpensive. Four of us, shared the antipasto Misto starter at £17. Which was good.. When one of us could not take the cheese pizza flatbread, they offered a garlic as an alternative and subsequently added £8 to the bill! Their special was a venison pie with a rich jus. - Just as well as it proved impossible to cut, or break the crust, even after soaking with the jus. The venison was stringy and a great disappointment. Similarly , the pork belly was overcooked with the meat nearly as hard as the crackling. Coffee afterwards served in minuscule cups. Total cost for a shared starter, main course , coffee and four beers was £145.

The Oxford Arms delivers everything that I look for in a pub, the food is excellent, the service is speedy and professional and the friendly atmosphere is exactly what I look for after a long week at work, it is a positive place that makes you relax and feel so welcome, it is also dog friendly so you can bring the whole family out for the evening. I cannot reccomend this place enough, fantastic in every way.

Near family so used to visit here several time under the last management. Have been working abroad so the review had to wait. The place was looking a but tired when we last visited, and nothing has changed to spruce it up, it still looks tired and 'old fashioned'. This visit was not an enjoyable experience on every level, staff were friendly but that doesn't make up for the lack of service, quality or pricing of the food. The good thing is there is always plenty of parking, hard to say anything else, except there has to be places that try and achieve a higher standards. Sorry, mate wont be returning.

First time I’ve been back to the Oxford Arms since the new ownership. Was unsure what to expect. Happily surprised to have a lovely meal with great service by friendly staff.

Had a really lovely Sunday lunch here - particularly good service from our waitress (thank you!) and really delicious food. We come here quite often and find it a family friendly place where our kids are made to feel welcome. I also love that it’s dog friendly, especially with Tula the pub dog running about!

What a fabulous pub for Sunday lunch! Between us we had delicious roasts with all the trimmings (extra gravy too as it was so scrumptious!) The pub atmosphere was delightful and staff very friendly and helpful. We will definitely be back!

We enjoyed a great night of food and drinks at this lovely country pub! The bar had a very friendly and welcoming crowd, and we indulged in a long evening of excellent hospitality. Thank you Oxford Arms!

We went in for Sunday lunch after a beautiful walk in the area. We didn’t have a booking and they were busy. They squeezed us in a table at the back. All the staff were friendly and helpful. The food was delicious.

While the staff are very pleasant and polite they are clearly lacking from training and spent more time at the bar flirting with the barman than paying attention to the diners. We sat in the room next to the bar which felt like an overflow room, cold dark and empty. The food was flavoursome and presented beautifully however my pork belly was dry and over cooked. The gravy was like water. No one came to check if the food was OK or any problems both in starter and mains. Even when collecting the empty plates no one asked if everything was OK. The gents toilets had no way of drying hands, no hand dryer or towels. The ladies toilet bin was overflowing. During the course of our meal the staff had used a large table behind us next to the bar to polish cutlery which not only looked messy but I don't expect to pay that much and have to raise my voice to talk over the sound of cutlery clattering about, that should never be done in front of customers. A table had a cleaning products (spray bottle and cloth) left on it the entire time we sat there, staff had cleared it then started to clean it and just forgotten to finish the job. Overall the experience wasn't horrendous but I wouldn't visit again. I feel the manager clearly has low standards and doesn't train thier staff on the little single things that make all the difference. One final note is that i feel its insulting to add a service charge (which i did ask to be removed) if the service warrents it i will always tip my server and tip well. If a service charge is added i am more likely to remove it and not tip at all. Service charges are owners greed and make staff lazy as they dont feel the need to go the extra mile for the tip. Overall a real shame

Very lucky to have this pub as our local! Great food! Great beer and lovely service. Thank you 😊

Cute little pub in a lovely village. Friendly staff too. Loved it.

The Oxford Arms is a fabulous pub for Sunday lunch! Great food, staff, service and atmosphere thoroughly recommend will be back.

Very nice food Lovely Log fire Did get a bit smoky as it nearly when out

Kirtlington, other review - 'Proper Cotswold Pub atmosphere' it is a friendly pub, but just to be clear, Kirtlington is not in the Cotswolds, thank goodness for that, otherwise, the house prices would be even higher. Soon to be opened (Dec 2023) under new management, The Dashwood, will give healthy competition in the village. Room for both, lucky Kirtlington. Just adding a fact, not commenting on quality of food etc Stars not appropriate this time.

Great place to have dinner! The food was very fresh and good portion sizes (I really recommend the two burgers). Service was efficient and friendly. And it has a proper Cotswolds pub atmosphere. Highly recommend.

It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, so, probably not the best time for atmosphere but the Gambas al Ajillo was superb ... 😉👍

This gorgeous village pub has great service, friendly staff and the roast beef was delicious, best Sunday lunch I’ve had in ages!!

Wonderful Sunday lunch, great atmosphere and service. Dog friendly which is rare. Best Yorkshire puddings in the country!

Nice pub with good staff. However to charge £20 for a Sunday roast then only serve 2 fairly thin slices of beef was really poor. The vegetable portions were small too, but they then try to hide all this by serving an enormous Yorkshire pudding. That makes the plate look full but costs them next to nothing. All in all pretty disappointing and the only reason it scrapes a 3rd star is because the staff are very nice.

Lovely village pub, friendly bar service. Such a shame that the pebbled garden area is littered with dog excrement. Spoilt the whole visit.

I took my daughter out for a treat for dinner. I have been here before and had a good meal (pan fried salmon) so I was so disappointed with the meal we both had. The Keralan curry was awful, it didn't have chickpeas or courgette in as stated but soggy cauliflower (which I don't like). The sauce tasted like a ready made one. I wouldn't have chosen the curry if I had known about the change of ingredients. My daughter's vegan pizza was soggy and tasteless so she left half of it. It is a small dining area and quite busy last night so I didn't feel I could say anything to the staff discreetly without being overheard. I did call and let them know about our experience the next day and the assistant manager did say the curry had changed but they forgot to update the menu - which happens but the curry was definitely not worth £15. The pizza, well my daughter made a nicer one at home last week! It looked like it had just come from a packet and had been put in the oven. I didn't expect fine dining, but it is not that difficult to make a good curry that uses fresh ingredients and is flavoursome. If you go choose carefully. The ambience is nice, the dining area quite small but cosy. The staff are attentive.

Nice friendly pub. Will visit again.

Meal ok, but service was very muddled, they didn't seem to know what table was what. Smelly dogs near our table, barking at each other, so we asked to be moved. Wrong drinks, had to be changed and to top it all, very, very expensive! 👎

A very nice pint and friendly service in a nice spot, but the food was not great and over priced for what it was. My curry had chicken cubes added for £4 extra but was maybe out of a freezer and was not nice at all. The calamari was a little odd, more like something to serve the kids. Probably my fault for not stocking to something harder to get wrong. Will try again to see if it was the chefs holiday (possible as early September heatwave).

Lovely meal. Pan fried Salmon for main and sorbet for desert. Nice friendly pub with nice atmosphere.

Visited by way of a recommendation and I was not disappointed. A real English pub with proper beer, great food and amazing staff!!

This was a new venue for us (4 friends). The food was delicious and the staff even obliged us by changing some of the components of a couple of the dishes on request. We would definitely visit here again and would like to thank the front of house and kitchen staff for making our visit really pleasant.

Delicious lunch as always with great service.. Highly recommended a visit

Great food. Too many dogs allowed in restaurant area.

Had a lovely Sunday lunch there yesterday. Food was excellent as was the service. Would highly recommend this place to anyone passing through. Food quality and price was fantastic.

Great village pub and restaurant. Good food, good beer, nice people, fireplace and dog friendly. All boxes ticked.

Pleasantly surprised nice staff and we caught them at a very busy time. Good value for money. The burger was a bit overcooked but was perfectly edible and tasty

Great food service was good but not great

My two friends and I were looking for a relaxed venue for a birthday lunch. I have driven past this pub many times thinking that from the outside it looked very nice. I was not disappointed as the pub staff made us feel very welcome and we enjoyed our meals. There were plenty of choices on the menu.

had lunch at the end of a long walk at the lovely Oxford Arms. we booked on the phone - which was answered before opening hours, and were made to feel very welcome by the staff. We sat outside in the pretty courtyard. The drinks...

Good little pub in pretty little village, great food and beer served by excellent staff. Only thing I would Change is sealing the kitchen off a bit more as it was very noisy

Stopped by for chips and rehydration on the way back from Silverstone. Delicious, brilliant and wonderful service! We lived a few doors up in the 1980s and this pub was where I drank as a teenager. It was full of character then, and still is....

Great bier garden outback with friendly locals and cool dogs. Guinness on tap and tasty bar food. It was a great day!

Surprisingly busy country pub. I did actually eat, but the meals being served looked good. Beer was good. Nice afternoon in the pub garden. Dog friendly pub as well.

I looked on-line for a really lovely old Woldy pub. Well I found the perfect place. I had never been to Kidlington and it was absolutely gorgeous. Beautiful Cotswold stone and roses growing round doorways. The Pub The Oxford Arms - well just superb. I...

Visited for lunch with friends before an event at Blenhiem Palace and very pleased to see the previous reviews were accurate. Service and food were excellent. Sat in the garden area but would have been happy inside had the weather not been so lovely. Will...

An unplanned visit and super impressed by the quality of food and service - well beyond typical pub standards. Great evening - we’ll done to all at aThe Oxford Arms.

Great gastro pub nestled in a beautiful quintessential English village. Great food and friendly service- give it a go 👍

Fantastic Lunch today even though we were over an hour late on the booking because of M40 closure and they had already bent over backwards to accommodate us as they had a large celebration party at the same time. The staff were brilliant and the...

What a Fantastic Lunch ….. even though we were stuck on the M4 for almost 2 hours making us an hour late for our booking for 10 which they had bent over backwards to accommodate because they already had a celebration party booked at the same time. The food was still cooked fresh to perfection Thanks 🙏

End of season dinner for our gang of 10 Woodies and we were sooo impressed with the service and quality of food. On contact we were advised to precook so the waiting time would be shorter and it turned out handy as each couple ended...

We had such a great experience at The Oxford Arms. The food was out of this world, and such value for money. The pub and restaurant had such a great vibe and the staff were incredible. I would highly recommend a night out at The...

A lovely little village pub, with excellent food and really lovely staff.

Quirky old pub, nice atmosphere… I didn’t have lunch but it looked good :-) Good place to stop after visiting Blenheim Palace.

Met some friends for snack yesterday lunchtime. Lovely food and very good service. Well done to Scott & team.

A really friendly reception. The food was great. The pub has a lovely atmosphere. No problem parking. Highly Recommended overall.

friendly, good with dogs good food

Nice burger, friendly staff and good choice of beers

Excellent pub lunch. Friendly welcome, pleasant and efficient staff and well cooked food. What more can you ask for!

Great Saffa pub to watch the rugby

Lovely country pub. Food and service great! Highlight recommend the steak. Best in the area. Will most definitely be back.

Really nice village pub. Good atmosphere and friendly welcome. Only issue at present is that the nearby Dashwood is closed, the sign on the door says now at the Oxford Arms. This means at popular times it’s impossible to just walk in

A pub with a nice atmosphere and really good food.

We passed the restaurant on our way home and popped in on the hope of getting a table. The restaurant was full but the Manager said he had a table free for 40 minutes. We said we'd be quick. Within 20 minutes he came and...

Ticks most hospitality boxes - well organised, clean, good service, attractive venue. For Sunday lunch, all of the vegetarian option could have come from a catering supplier, heated up and arranged on the plate in the kitchen. It was decent quality but a tad bland....

Beautiful pub, friendly and accommodating staff, tasty food, good drink selection. What more do you want?

A great meal, great service, and good atmosphere. A proper country pub.

lovely pub with a good atmosphere. service excellent. the pizza I had was one of the best I have ever tasted puts all the chain pizza places to shame. my friends had the slow roasted belly of poirk also excellent. puddings to die for.

Amazing roast and lovely intimate country pub with great service. This has quickly become my favourite pub in the area and it never disappoints. The fish and chips are fab! Plus I can bring my dog along too which is perfect.

A brilliant pub. We just happened upon it when we were looking for somewhere to go for my mum's birthday and it turned out to be a great choice. Our waitress, Nicole, gave a warm welcome and went above and beyond in looking after us. The food was excellent, and reasonably priced. My mum said the steak was "to die for" and I really enjoyed the ravioli starter. What's more, the pub had a great atmosphere: roaring open fireplace, lively locals, and friendly waiting staff. A perfect pub!

Very hospitable. Well kept beer. Food nothing special. I had waffles for pudding which were not crisp. Bit soggy actually.