The apparent failure of Harry Ramsden's Oxford restaurant raises the all-important question: is Oxford too posh for fish and chips?

Oxford Mail restaurant critic Chris Gray said as much on first sampling the garish surrounds of Harry Ramsden's at its opening in March last year. Gourmet Gray, as quintessential an Oxford gent as you are likely to find, was more than a little perturbed at the restaurant's shocking pink walls, oak panelling and wall-to-wall carpet - all styled on Ramsden's first eaterie in Guiseley, near Leeds.

He wrote: "How out of tune it all seems in a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city like Oxford. Palates more used to balsamic vinegar are bluntly offered Sarsons. Drinkers of Earl Grey and lapsang get only Yorkshire tea. Folk who might agonise between demi-glace or chasseur sauce must settle for Bisto onion gravy. And lovers of a thick wedge of crusty wholemeal bread have only sliced white or brown, ready buttered."

He continued: "Without being snobby about it, what happens at Ramsden's is that the clock is turned back 40 years to an era that most of us over 40 will remember with no real pangs of regret - the days when food's only purpose was to fill you up."

On the other hand, you could argue that in a cosmopolitan city like Oxford there should as much room for solid Yorkshire grub as multi-ethnic haute cuisine.

Oxford Mail fellow critic George Frew, a lard-loving Scotsman still coming to terms with living in the effeminate south, had a whale of a time when he dropped in during National Chip Week earlier this year. He raved: "The cod was a poem, the likes of which I have not tasted since the summers were longer and the policemen all looked older.

"I left this cathedral of fish and chips whistling a hymn of praise."

And if Harry Ramsden's has failed in Oxford, it is not due to the prices, which are as down to earth as the restaurant's menu.

Cod and chips to take away costs £2.70 - about the same as the average chippy across Oxfordshire - and fish, chips and bread and butter eaten inside the restaurant will set you back £4.99.

No, despite all our delusions of grandeur, it is likely to have been the location Harry Ramsden's chose when they ventured to Oxford that has limited the number of customers.

The spot, tucked away in St Ebbe's, was never likely to be bustling with would-be diners and the huge Bhs development has hit trade in the area across the board.

Harry Ramsden's director Richard Richardson said the firm had learned a few lessons in Oxford and was looking at alternative sites outside the city centre.

Perhaps if they move away from the shadows of the dreaming spires, and into an area that is more town, than gown, they will discover that Oxford loves Britain's favourite meal as much as everyone else.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.