City Grocery

City Grocery is Oxford's finest and most celebrated restaurant, open since 1992 on the Courthouse Square and home to the cooking of James Beard Award-winning chef John Currence. Currence, a New Orleans native who came to Oxford intending to stay briefly and never left, built City Grocery into the anchor of an Oxford dining empire that includes several adjacent concepts. The restaurant occupies a two-story building on the Square: the main dining room and open kitchen occupy the ground floor, while the bar and a second dining level open onto a balcony overlooking the Square below. Currence's cooking is a sophisticated interpretation of Southern cuisine that draws on his New Orleans background, Gulf Coast ingredients, and the agricultural richness of north Mississippi. Signature dishes include shrimp and grits made with stone-ground Mississippi corn and Gulf white shrimp, grilled quail with seasonal accompaniments, and a City Grocery Burger available at lunch that has become as emblematic of the restaurant as the formal dinner menu. The wine list is among the most thoughtful in Mississippi, and the bar program includes classic cocktails executed with precision. The upstairs balcony on warm evenings, overlooking the Square's activity, is one of the most coveted dining perches in Mississippi. Reservations are strongly recommended and essential on football weekends when Oxford fills with tens of thousands of Ole Miss fans.