The Isis Farmhouse, Oxford

Now known as the Isis Farmhouse, this is a strange place, but one that somehow grew on us and we finished up visiting three times whilst staying in the nearby village of Iffley for the weekend. I have a soft spot for places that cannot be reached by car and situated in fields between Donnington Bridge and Iffley Lock, the Isis farmhouse can only be reached by people in boats, on foot or on bikes, and in my limited experience this also includes several people with small children and / or dogs in tow. This place has split personalities, being part café, part pub, part restaurant and part music venue and different bits of that personality are to the fore depending on when you visit. I had the luck of visiting over the hottest weekend of the year so far, and therefore had the opportunity to utilise the enormous outside seating area by the river. I’m not sure what I would make of it during a cold winters evening when you would be confined to the building and its strange décor. The interior is hard to describe, with its plain plaster walls, bare floor boards, assorted strange furniture, rowing boat hanging from the ceiling, and fairy lights hung all over the place. My wife referred to it as Shabby Chic. To me it was more like the owners had called builders in to renovate the place and they did a runner with the cash after first stripping out all the wall paper and the carpets. One key reason why we liked this place was because the central serving area met our different individual needs. The right side is more café with coffee and tea facilities and cakes and scones on display and the left hand side is more pub, with three ale barrels from local Oxon breweries, seven lager and cider taps dispensing Cotswold brewery products and then an extensive range of bottled beers, again from local Oxfordshire breweries behind the bar. So the wife was happy with her coffee and cakes and I couldn’t fault the local ales coming out the barrels. Other review sites have several references to the current owner being grumpy, but no evidence of that when we visited, just young hardworking staff behind the counters. The food menu is another strange point. Along with the cakes and the scones (which were massive and excellent) it is nearly exclusively daily main meal specials upwards of £9 and the only light meal they do is basically beans on toast with cheese that is available all day. We didn’t try these so cannot comment in this respect. Also it is shut Monday to Wednesday (and Thursday during winter months), and they only take cash, no cards. It functions more as a standard pub in the evenings and I am not sure if they do it every evening or just for a fine weather Saturday night, but on a barmy summers evening, with tea lights glowing on every table, sitting in the garden by the Thames was quite magical.