Cambridgeshire Restaurant Guide

Lee Clarke's Peterborough restaurant Prévost moved to this newly refurbished historic hotel on the River Nene, where you might stay in a room once occupied by Queen Victoria. Ex-L'Enclume chef Sam Nash joins Clarke to run both Prévost and the more casual Haycock Kitchen.

Vegan restaurant Stem & Glory (which nowadays also has a London offshoot) is moving from the city-centre to a swish new home in the burgeoning new developments, just seconds from the train station. It’s a swish new unit at the bottom of a large office building, incorporating a WeWork.

A grill-focused hotel restaurant that opened in September 2021 with White Rabbit Studio (Lina Stores, Kricket) in charge of the food under chef Adam Wood (ex-Perilla); it's set within the new Graduate hotel on the banks on the Cam (there's also one in Oxford; the group also has a portfolio of hotels in college towns in America).

In April 2019, former MasterChef finalist Alex Rushmer, who closed his Cambridge restaurant Hole in the Wall in 2017, took over a former Subway shop a little outside the city centre, with his former sous chef, Lawrence Butler. Focusing on local, ethical food, it offers a fixed five-course vegetarian menu which changes daily and features a chef’s table where diners sit at a countertop pass for four with views over the open kitchen. Its fanclub is still small as things stand but couldn’t rate it more highly, saying its “very inventive non-meat cuisine” is “well-sourced and just perfect”. Don’t plan on dropping in though: bookings are released on the first Thursday of the month, two months in advance!

“Amazing… every time” is still the most typical assessment of this acclaimed Victorian villa – one of the UK’s most renowned eateries – which is very picturesquely situated across the Cam from the Varsity’s boat houses and bordering Midsummer Common. Daniel Clifford and his team deliver “a superb overall dining experience: the number and quality of amuse-bouches, the sourdough bread, each individual course… the service… all of the highest order”. Even many fans feel that the “exuberant bill is hard to justify”, however, and to its critics the “staggering costs” are plain OTT, with toppish wine prices a particular gripe (“some more reasonable ‘house’ options would be welcome”).

“Beautiful home-cooked food” has been on the menu of this real “long-time favourite” since 1968, when owner Ann Jarman opened an “informal” restaurant and art gallery with two friends in this Georgian house with a large walled garden near the cathedral. (“A diner at a table nearby had ham, jacket potato and salad. The ham looked to be real ham, and he was offered more meat if he wanted it. My husband had an amazing bakewell tart, with very light pastry and a lovely almond flavour”).

“The food is fine, though perhaps not exceptional”, at this “very professional hotel restaurant”, but “the wine list is incredible” – “selected by proprietor John Hoskins, Master of Wine”, who also runs the in-house vintner’s: there are “some real gems at very fair prices”, along with “a remarkable number of lovely and interesting wines by the glass”.