The closure of venues including Rambutan, Chianti and Betty's Soup Kitchen has put a serious dent in the reputation of this once golden slice of Oxford Street, a section the Sydney Mardi Gras parade passes each year before swinging right into Flinders Street. Stalwart Betty's Soup Kitchen pulled up stumps late last year. ''If a soup kitchen can't make it, what can?'' asks a veteran of the strip.

When chef Andrew Prasad took a job last year as head chef at a new restaurant on Oxford Street, near Taylor Square, he was more than qualified. He'd worked at Bennelong and Lucio's, and had experience in the kitchen of a pub on Oxford Street. His new home, Chianti restaurant, lasted just nine months.

''Our windows got smashed twice,'' he says. ''I remember one time the coppers had some guy pushed up against the window in the middle of service. I think it's just going to get worse and worse.''

The lord mayor of the City of Sydney, Clover Moore, doesn't disagree. This part of Oxford Street is her turf and she cites violence on the strip as one of her chief concerns.

''On Friday and Saturday nights, it's really out there and dangerous,'' Moore says. ''You've only got to look at the number of incidents the police deal with … People come from all over Sydney, get drunk and spaced out.''

Is it fair to say serious food can no longer survive in that environment? ''Yes. The battle is lost until we can turn that [the violence] around,'' she says.

Moore supports the liquor freeze introduced by the state government that extends from Whitlam Square to Taylor Square, seriously restricting liquor licences, venue capacity and operating hours.

Some operators want to see exemptions made for small bars, which they argue don't create unsociable behaviour and would bring new life to Oxford. Moore's answer is a retreat from the main drag. She's taking back some basement spaces of council-owned properties fronting Foley Street that she'd like to see activated as an easily patrolled and contained small-bar precinct.

The hurdles for Oxford Street are many and complex. The opening of new Westfield shopping centres at Bondi Junction and the city have bookended the strip with new competition and drained it of many operators who joined the Westfield party. Veterans at the Darlinghurst end of the strip say efforts to clean up Kings Cross have only pushed more trouble their way.

Jeremy McNamara, who joined the exodus of the Darlinghurst end of Oxford Street last year when he closed the well-reviewed Snakebean restaurant, maintains things started to unravel several years ago when the Oxford Street upgrade took place.

''They seemed to close it to do the electricity, then the water and the gas,'' he says. ''Constant disruptions. There has been a slow migration of the gay community out of the area and then the bus lanes came in a few years ago. That's made a big difference. It made it more difficult to park your car, take a walk and choose somewhere to eat.''

Mention the bus lanes on Oxford Street and operators on the strip often roll their eyes. The creator of website saveoxfordstreet.com, Stephen Gyory, is passionate about the subject of traffic. ''They took out both right turns. They've turned it into a six-lane highway: do they want it to be a main road or a main street?'' he says.

Moore says: ''I don't want Oxford Street treated as a thoroughfare for people to get to their houses in Vaucluse.''

She wants Oxford Street ''calmed'' with new speed limits. And depending on the upcoming decision about whether light rail will run up the street, Moore would like the bus lanes moved to the middle of the thoroughfare.

Perhaps the biggest blow to food credibility on Oxford Street in recent times was the closure of Rambutan restaurant. Owner Joe Natale has come out swinging.

''We won an award as best Thai for the last three years,'' he says. ''If we'd been somewhere else, it would've been a completely different story.''

Natale has lashed out at everything from parking to the bus lanes, the demographics nightclubs attract to the area and the continual approval of what he sees as ''more and more convenience stores and kebab shops''.

Gyory says local businesses have lots of ideas for refreshing the strip - his own proposals include a major design competition for a new fountain at Taylor Square and opening the gates to the forecourt of the law courts for public use.

Everyone seems to have a piece of Oxford Street: state and local government, the police and various interest groups. Gyory is typical of many in wanting more leadership on its future direction. ''We just want to see a plan,'' he says.

Fond memories of the cradle of mod-Oz cuisine

It hasn't always been this way for Oxford Street. The strip was Sydney's original new-wave eat street; a prototype others tried and usually failed to duplicate.

If it wasn't the birthplace of mod-Oz restaurant food, it was certainly its most productive nursery.

The owner-chef of Pier restaurant, Greg Doyle earned his stripes on Oxford Street as the operator of the restaurant attached to Rogues nightclub between 1979 and 1982.

The strip was home to some of the biggest names in Australian culinary history. During its golden era, the Paddington end boasted the likes of Phillip Searle at the ground-breaking Oasis Seros and an up-and-coming young chef named Neil Perry at Perry's, paving the way for later arrivals such as chefs Matt Moran, Paul Merrony and Luke Mangan. All have since left.

Doyle says the Darlinghurst end was "hip and happening".

"At Rogues, we were packed every night,'' he says. ''There was a queue 200 metres up the road.''

The lower slopes of Darlinghurst were fertile, so many top restaurateurs ploughed in. Anders Ousback set up camp at Taylor Square restaurant, across from Kinselas, where Tony Bilson gave Tetsuya Wakuda his start.

"John Pegrum ran the dining room at The Albury and Tony Barlow had the restaurant at the Burdekin hotel," Doyle says. "The area had a really good, relaxed vibe. There was none of the aggressiveness that has made the public reluctant to go there."

Much of the action has since moved to the surrounding streets.

"You'd never have thought 20 years ago that [restaurateurs] would say 'I want Crown or Bourke streets rather than Oxford'," says Conrad Vass from CV Property Group, a veteran of the area who has witnessed the change.

Operators seeking a new home have migrated to even more niche precincts in recent years, including the laneways of Darlinghurst that have been put on the map by Love, Tilly Devine and The Owl House.

At the Paddington end, there's been plenty of action in the side streets, where Fratelli Paradiso launched 10 William Street and Cipri Italian opened. But it has been the spread of high-profile eat streets across Sydney that has marked the beginning of the 21st century. From Neutral Bay to Marrickville and Kirribilli, eating strips have flourished. And in the once food-barren suburbs to the south, another shift is under way. Redfern, Alexandria and Waterloo have taken off, and Rosebery is the next star on the rise.

Old haunts, new tricks

While the 1980s and 1990s represented Oxford Street at its peak, the one constant has been Claude's, which opened in 1976 and remains a twin-toqued restaurant under current owner-chef Chui Lee Luk.

She has watched with interest the changing face of Oxford Street. She's observed the period of duplicate retail stores, the relocation of boutiques to Westfield and the current fad for pop-up stores.

"Initially, this area was arty with a bohemian buzz,'' she says. ''But rents went higher and higher and a lot of the interesting boutiques had to move out. Fortunately, a lot of the greedy landlords have seen the light and offered discounts on rents."

Lee Luk is optimistic the Paddington strip of Oxford Street will morph into something new and attract "some of the more interesting places that can't afford the rents elsewhere".

Indeed, her tiny strip of Oxford is in many ways the poster child for the street. Buzo spinoff The Wine Library has been an instant hit, and Claude's is building on its success, closing soon for a major redesign that will see it re-emerge as part fine diner, part neighbourhood eatery-speakeasy.

Four in Hand chef Colin Fassnidge is one of the new wave trying to reinvent Oxford Street. Fassnidge, who recently stepped in to produce the pub grub at the Paddington Arms Hotel, admits the strip is a challenge: "In one place there are five shops in a row for lease".

Fassnidge believes more realistic rents will attract enthusiastic new players. He says pubs have banded together to work on a unified approach to making Oxford hum again. He says part of the solution is refreshing what used to make Oxford Street a great place to visit.

"They've got the markets but they've dropped off the radar a bit. I'd like to see more fresh food there. You've got the blueprint at Eveleigh market. I've been talking to some of the chefs in the area about it and we'd really like to make it happen. We need to make the area better."