The Cambridge Chop House

Tuesday 18 February

We stumbled on the Cambridge Chop House through an internet search once we arrived today in Cambridge, the Other College City.  It sounded all the right notes for a gastropub: not a chain, local suppliers, honest cooking, and right near Trinity College, where we're staying while Holt consults a manuscript. 

There was a nice wine list as well as good beers, so we got a bottle of Domaine Trinités le Portail red Faugerés, to go along with a "Grazing plate": succulent beet-cured salmon slices, a very tasty roll of pulled venison, smoked duck breast slices, haggis frittered into little lollipops, a chunk of Godminster cheddar cheese, corn relish, and cracklings (still just pigskin to us), plus a few leaves of salad and some bread to prop it up.

We then split a Radwinter venison haunch steak with wild mushroom sauce, colcannon mash, and carrot and swede; and a seared loin and braised leg of rabbit with (a little) mustard, mushrooms, barley, and carrots - and just a tiny pellet of shot, which lets you know it was wild.

Harold had a plump whole trout, fresh and light pink.

We all liked our food, and we liked the Cambridge Chop House as well.