The café was empty, save for a smiling greeter arranging some slips of paper. On the 19th May 2024, by far the warmest day in a while, I’d rushed to Common Ground café on Little Clarendon Street to meet my friend, who’d invited me along at the last minute. There, I was confronted with one of my least preferable scenarios: I’d turned up early to an event where I had to socialise with an empty room.
And then my friend texted me to say she was running late.
Thankfully, the person at the door gave me a very warm welcome. Within a few minutes, aided by an exceptional cocktail mixed with seasonal herbs and a few other keen guests, I found myself sinking into an excellent conversation. Before I’d realised it, the room had filled with around seventy people, and by the time my friend showed up, her arrival almost came as a complete surprise.
It turned out that the greeter, Jae, formed part of the group of cooks—along with Heather, Jacob, and Leika—who were to prepare and serve our food for the night, the third instalment in Little C’s series of supper clubs. According to Heather, the team at ‘Little C’—all denizens of the Common Ground café and workspace—started their initiative around six months ago with the express aim of encouraging regulars at the café and community space to interact. In Heather’s words, the aim of the supper club is to capture ‘the chaos and warmth of a big family dinner’, which it certainly does in spades. I rarely enjoy venues which are busy, loud, or too restricted for space, but Little C pitched it just right to the point where it felt relaxed and playful.
Crucially, while I recognise many Common Ground regulars by sight, I rarely find a pretext to speak with them. Little C’s mission to encourage guests to interact proved highly effective in this regard. Over the course of the evening, I not only spoke to a few familiar faces, but I also formed lasting connections. One of the reasons that I am writing this article comparatively late after the event is that it has spawned a rich afterlife in the form of Pride brunches and private dinner parties with people I had met at Little C, about which I will write more in subsequent articles.
As someone who has frequented Common Ground since it opened over ten years ago, I have seen it expand its events calendar to include comedy nights, concerts, and life drawing classes. The café even hosts a record shop (Flow Records: more on that later), Curio Books, and a second-hand clothes shop on its site. In an act of beautiful symbiosis, the organisers celebrate the businesses and creatives that share Common Ground’s space: for example, the dinner was punctuated by an exceptional performance by Rachel Smyth, a singer-songwriter with an elegant and commanding voice, and concluded, after the tables had been cleared to make way for a dancefloor, with a DJ set by the owner of Flow Records, Chris.
Little C feels like an important initiative to support because, like Common Ground, it is committed to supporting local charities and reducing food waste. Two-thirds of the proceeds of the supper club went towards local charities, while the club reinvested the remaining third into buying equipment for its future events. This approach extends to the food as well: Worthy Earth Farm, run by Harrison (farmer and co-organiser of the Flow Soundsystem club night, along with Cam), donated its excess fruit and vegetables to Little C, allowing them to offer ‘farm to table’ cooking of exceptional quality at an accessible price and support the environment, too.
It goes without saying that the menu, all vegan and featuring several rounds of starters and desserts to complement the mains, proved carefully considered and inspired, making the most of the seasonal ingredients that Worthy Earth had donated. I kept coming back for more wild garlic focaccia dipped in the roasted garlic cannellini dip with pickled beetroot, while the nuts in the sorrel salad complemented the earthy flavour of the hummus. I enjoyed the main dish of braised turnips and burnt leeks on cheesy polenta, with the turnips lending a sweet and sour note, the leeks earthiness, the chimichurri sourness and the crispy onions textural contrast. Owing to my sweet tooth, the night’s standout for me was the rhubarb crumble custard bun, which Leika produced in enormous, braided loaves that she kept sliding off baking trays when they—very tellingly—kept running out.
Little C’s thoughtful approach to menu design, the preparation of their food, the quality of the donated ingredients and its strong emphasis on fostering community and helping local charities all lead me to recommend that readers attend their next offering, due to take place on the 8th September at the same venue, Common Ground. Switching things up, the team will propose a menu of informal street food to support the launch of the first of Flow Records’ regular DJ nights, running from 2pm till late.
Little C’s concept stands out not only for the quality of its food, but also for the value it places upon community. I would maintain that the term ‘community’ is often overused when describing events, but I believe that the greatest compliment I can give Little C, beyond lauding its food, is that its ‘family dinner’ version of community stands out as genuine, heartening and addictive: the friends I made during this night are testament to this.
Oxford can sometimes feel as if it lacks a sense of community owing to its itinerant student population; Little C, however, seems capable of effortlessly attracting a diverse and compelling cast of people from across the city for an unforgettable night and lasting friendships. I certainly left with a big fat grin on my face.