The Cowley Road does not rate a mention in the Oxford guidebooks. It links the university with the suburb of Cowley, where British Ley land has a large and sprawling factory.

Cowley Road is fascinating, a microcosm of the changes that have come over Britain in the last twenty-five years. It has Greek, Italian, Pakistani, Indian, and Chinese restaurants and a Caribbean pub. Native English cuisine is represented only by "fish 'n' chips" shops, one of them run by Hong Kong Chinese. Finger-lickin Col. Sanders is the outpost of American gastronomic imperialism. None of these places existed twenty years ago. Levi-Strauss in Le cru et le cuit (the Raw arid the Cooked) saw in eating the basis of cultural differences. Tell me what you had for breakfast and I'll tell you who you are.