Three years ago I had quit my 30-year career in advertising, sold my house and secured myself a job as a kitchen porter at Turl Street Kitchen.

Five months later I had signed up to run St Giles Café, by general consensus the very “greasiest of spoons”. Two and a half years later I’ve taken the decision to give it up so as to focus on my newest venture The White Hart of Wytham and pass on the café – according to Google, now “a posh café with classy breakfasts” – to a new ‘curator’.

It’s been a story of losses and gains, both of which have strengthened my resolve to make The White Hart a real landmark of hospitality within a country mile of Oxford city centre.

The losses have been the deaths of my first wife, whose progressive multiple sclerosis finally defeated her, and Jimmy, a kitchen porter who died very suddenly and whose unendingly cheery face and extraordinary motivation for hard work has left a very permanent memory on everyone who knew him.

There have also been financial losses. It’s nigh on impossible to operate a small café in central Oxford with a commitment to making high quality food fresh every day and make ends meet.

Overheads are well beyond what they should be – because property lies in too few hands – and talented professional chefs and front of house servers take one look at the spiralling cost of living in Oxford and quickly go elsewhere.

Recent footfall statistics from Oxford City Council – show an unrelenting decline in visitors, currently down 5.5 per cent year-on-year. From the tiny space on St Giles, it feels that this beautiful city is up a creek without a paddle, reliant on its extraordinary history to somehow muddle through.

The gains have all been about people. Thousands of customers – local people and visitors – who have supported us and never ceased to tell us how good our food is and recommended us to their friends or left reviews to inform a wider audience.

They embraced our dining club (to be resurrected at The White Hart) where they were thrilled to sit at a table beside someone they’d never met and hear an academic speak with passion. They’ve told us how our Oxford homemade sausages are like no other, our bread made daily with fresh yeast and our loose leaf tea, among other menu items, is a real and genuine sustenance of a kind that has been lost in this world of processed, pre-prepared foods, with too many eateries playing fast and loose with descriptions such as “lovingly handmade”. With one or two exceptions, many highly talented and hardworking young and/or disadvantaged people have sought work at the café.

Two in particular walked in the week before we were due to reopen and have since become our head chef and general manager at The White Hart.

They have given tirelessly everyday – through every conceivable event – and have already put the pub on the map as a welcoming high quality destination. Others have come – several from Spain – to escape appalling unemployment, leaving their families behind, to work with such skill industry. They serve as a very real reminder that this business is a profession, and those who think it’s just a job should look elsewhere.

My greatest gain was to be married again two months ago to someone who has helped me endure the angst and stresses of the midnight text – “I can’t work tomorrow” – another failure of infrastructure or a rare bad review on Trip Advisor. We walked back down the aisle of All Saints Church, Wytham, to the song Daydream Believer, rode off in a horse drawn carriage and then had – if I say it myself – one humdinger of a party at The White Hart – with exceptional food and courtyard dancing all night long to an outstanding live band.

To quote Caitlin Moran: “Life divides into amazing enjoyable times and appalling experiences that will make for future amazing anecdotes.”

GO ALONG
The White Hart of Wytham, Wytham, Oxford
OX2 8QA 
info@whitehartwytham.com 01865 244372