Given we’ve no prior experience of Cambridge pubs, I asked around at work for recommendations of “somewhere slack, with decent beer and tasty food. No house music.” Ideally, it would be somewhere like The George or The Pub With No Name in Brighton. “You know, somewhere I can get some veggie food, and listen to some funk”. James piped up “I know somewhere like that. Get your self to the station, get on a train, and go to London”.
Dan made some suggestions, so, full of confidence, we made the schlep over to Mill Road to see what’s what. From the outside, it looked fairly promising: cask marque, free wi-fi, beer garden, and a clutch of decent reviews. Turns out this place has more than its fair share of celebrity among foodie sorts, so we decide to grab something. Unfortunately, it being a Sunday, the menu is geared up to push you towards the roasts - and there’s no veggie roast. A quick query to a nervous member of the kitchen staff reveals that they did do a nut roast, a few months back as a one off. So given we don’t fancy paying £8+ for a plate of pasta, we decided to raid the starter menu, and maybe check out some of the puds.
After grabbing a pint of what tasted like very well kept Caledonian Brewery’s Tattoo Ale, I went for the ciabatta with homemade hummus and peppers. Boo went for the same, and Michelle went for a soup, apparently courgette, sweet pepper, etc.
So, fair play, decent garden, nice bar. There was a great range of beers, and if the Tattoo is any indicator, they know what they are doing. Indeed, it appears that they were CAMRA’s Cambridge pub of the year in 2001. However, despite what the reviews say, the food was a major disappointment. The ciabatta was of the part-baked, warm up in the oven variety, and was overdone to the point where it shattered when approached. The hummus may or may not have been homemade, but if it was acquainted with garlic, they were no longer on speaking terms. The peppers tasted like they’d recently come out of a jar. Still, that wasn’t the worst of it. I may be being unfair in not accurately recalling exactly what the board said the food was, but given that the ingredients that the board suggested were in the soup tasted as if they were added according to homeopathic principles, you must forgive my lapse. If I was being kind, I would suggest that what purported to contain courgettes, sweet peppers, and the like was Covent Garden carrot and coriander out of a carton with a few bits thrown in as disguise. If I was feeling less charitable, I would suggest it was 80p packet soup of the same variety.
The final straw was a bunch of Nathan Barleys trooping in, and noisily letting the rest of the pub know that “pomegranate was really fashionable right now”. We made our leave, and headed off round the corner to the Cambridge Blue.