Brown's Cafe - Cheap Eats in Oxford Covered Market

Fill up on cheap, simple food at a typically English "caff" in the University town of Oxford

Does the idea of a full English breakfast first thing in the morning (fried eggs and chips, bacon, sausage, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms) give your stomach the flip flops? Not to worry. Not too many English people can face all that, before midday, either. So it's a good thing that Brown's Cafe, an unpretentious greasy spoon in Oxford's Victorian Covered Market, serves breakfast all day long. And it's only £4.25 for the full Monty.

Brown's has been around forever. The decor looks as though it has been there since before the flood -- wood paneled walls painted pale green, dusty bunches of plastic flowers, checked vinyl table cloths on some of the wobbly tables.

But looks aren't everything. I ate lunch beside an Oxford professor who had been a regular as a student, 23 years earlier. Today, her daughter was tucking into a huge slab of apple pie, smothered in yellow custard sauce. Around us university students and teachers, tourists, secretaries, shop clerks, truck drivers and market traders devoured such traditional English fare as Shepherd's pie, stuffed jacket potatoes, liver and onions, haddock and chips, plus sandwiches and burgers -- none of it costing much more than a fiver and all of it homemade by the family owners.

English people call this kind of place a "caff". It serves the kind food most of them ate as children. It may not look as beautiful as it might, but it's fast, familiar, filling and tasty. And the tea is made in a real tea pot -- from old fashioned tea leaves. This is a handy place to know about when visiting Oxford.