Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Cambridge
Hardens guides have spent 33 years compiling reviews of the best Cambridge restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 22 restaurants in Cambridge and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Cambridge restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Cambridge Restaurants
1. Restaurant Twenty Two
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
22 Chesterton Road - CB4
“Wow, the food is the real winner here. So many flavours leave you begging for more” – Sam Carter and Alexandra Oliver’s “very intimate Victorian terrace house” sits a short walk outside the city centre. “Electrified by young and clever passion”, “it has been on excellent form for years and seems to get better on each visit”, was “the deserved recipient of a Michelin star in the latest 2023 guide” and has a “warm, friendly unpretentious feel” to it that is in contrast to many foodie temples. “One relaxes into a small array of sensational snacks on arrival”: “sophisticated and bursting with flavour”. “This is followed by a sublime, unforgettable malty light bread that signals you are in for a great taste sensation of an evening” – a “seriously complex”, but “well thought out” set menu with “superb and exciting flavour combinations”. Service is “highly professional and knowledgeable” and “you’re allowed to eat at your own pace with no interruption”. “Pity it’s really difficult to get a table!” Top Menu Tip – the “flight of soft drinks is a riot of whacky creativity”.
2. Sticks'n'Sushi
Japanese restaurant in Cambridge
2 Wheeler Street - CB2
“Expensive, but high-quality yakitori skewers and sushi” are a “delicious and original offering that suit all ages”, and win little but praise for this “very consistent” chain, whose minimalist Scandi style reflects its origins in Copenhagen. Success continues to bring fast expansion, with recent openings in Westfield W12 (in December 2022) and Shoreditch (in March 2023) and more soon to follow in Richmond (October 2023) and Kingston (early 2024). Phew! Top Menu Tip – “truffle paste cauliflower side dish to die for (who knew?)”.
3. Pint Shop
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
10 Peas Hill - CB2
“A fantastic selection of beers (and gins)” makes the popular former home of E. M. Forster “a very useful and welcome gastro-choice in central Cambridge, where other options are not great”. The food is “reliable” and “decently done but nothing earth-shattering”. Top Tip – “stay downstairs: the upstairs dining room can have a chilly ambience”.
4. The Cambridge Chop House
British, Traditional restaurant in Cambridge
1 Kings Parade - CB2
This “always reliable” outfit in a prime tourist location pleases carnivores with its selection of classic British cuts of meat – while the “midweek early evening short menu is very reasonable”. “The ambience is much better if you can get a ground-level table” with views of King’s College Chapel – (“but usually you can’t!”).
5. The Ivy Cambridge Brasserie
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
16 Trinity Street - CB2
Like the other links in Richard Caring’s ubiquitous national chain, this “bustling” brasserie is a “very slick operation, with great decor”, and it’s useful for “breakfast that will set you up for the day” or “lunch on a shopping trip to Cambridge”. But although it’s consistently decently rated and thought to be “a nice clone”, it “has lost any magic associated with the Theatreland original”.
6. Parker's Tavern
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
1 Park Terrace - CB1
Starry local chef Tristan Welch (whose CV includes stints with Rhodes, Ramsay, Roux Jr. et. al.) is behind this “wonderful brasserie” in a “lovely setting” at the recently revamped University Arms hotel, overlooking Parker’s Piece green. East Anglian produce informs the cooking, which is “good” (if not spectacular) by all accounts, and makes it never less than “a reliable choice” when in this varsity town.
7. Garden House
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
Granta Place - CB2
2023 Review: “Focused on simple dishes, with excellent ingredients, all elevated by sharp cooking” – the year-old grill at this new Graduate Hotel (named for the previous hotel on this site) wins positive feedback in our annual diners’ poll (but too limited for a rating).
8. Steak & Honour
Burgers, etc restaurant in Cambridge
4 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, CB2 3QB - CB2
2022 Review: “Consistently excellent burgers from a small fleet of vintage Citroën vans” – painted bright yellow and red – ensure this small local brand has high visibility around Cambridge. You can also sample the burgers from a more conventional bricks and mortar site in Wheeler Street.
9. Millworks
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
The Watermill, Newnham Road - CB3
2021 Review: This “meaty joint” occupies an attractive converted mill, complete with working water wheel. It “continues to please students and locals in its airy space overlooking river and millpond (I saw a kingfisher!)”.
10. Oak Bistro
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
6 Lensfield Road - CB2
“Invaluable in the centre of Cambridge”, this smart independent bistro (est. 2009) maintains a “consistently high standard” with its Anglo-European cooking, and the “covered courtyard area makes a lovely place for dinner” in more clement months.
11. Amelie Restaurants
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
Grafton Centre - CB1
2021 Review: Look out for the bright yellow Citroën van, if you want to try veteran restaurateur Regis Crépy’s latest venture, selling Alsatian pizza-type Flammekueche in a Cambridge food court. For a tasty, cheap ’n’ cheerful snack that’s a little out of the ordinary, these “light”, “fresh-tasting” and “reasonably priced” wafers of bread dough complete with toppings are just the job.
12. Midsummer House
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
Midsummer Common - CB4
“Still at the very top level, with some unforgettable dishes” – Daniel Clifford’s brilliantly situated Victorian villa is one of the country’s better-established and most renowned culinary destinations. It helps that it has a charming location – next to the River Cam opposite the varsity’s many boathouses and in the middle of the greenery of Midsummer Common – and its overall approach “has an air of formality without being formal!” There’s an eight-course evening tasting menu for £250 per person (or a four-course lunch for £150 per person), which on practically all accounts is a “dreamy” gastronomic voyage created by head chef Mark Abbott; and backed up by a “hugely interesting” wine list (introduced by a “brilliant sommelier”). As always, there is the odd gripe about the level of expense here, absent which ratings might be even higher. But the most common sentiment this year? – “everything was perfect!”
13. Navadhanya Cambridge
Indian restaurant in Cambridge
73 Newmarket Rd - CB5
2022 Review: Ambitious and “exciting” Indian cuisine is on the menu at this Cambridge operation, which crossed the road into new premises in late 2021 (rendering obsolete complaints of “peeling wallpaper”). Reporters recommend choosing one of the tasting menus, which offer seven courses of standard, vegetarian or vegan dishes – “it meant that I tried dishes I wouldn’t normally choose and really opened up new flavours to me”.
14. Vanderlyle
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
38-40 Mill Road - CB1
Former MasterChef finalist Alex Rushmer’s follow-up (est. 2019) to the nearby Hole in the Wall in Little Wilbraham “goes from strength to strength”, offering what’s clearly a “top gastronomic experience” (and, for one reporter, “a favourite restaurant of all time”); the rather “eye-opening” plant-based menu uses only local, ethical and regeneratively grown produce, but this is “such clever food you barely notice that there is no meat”.
15. Stem & Glory
Vegan restaurant in Cambridge
50-60 Station Road - CB1
2023 Review: Limited but positive feedback on this successful vegan, which shifted to this new location in a new development near the station in 2021. Worth remembering if you are catching a train and a place of pilgrimage for those who eat meat-free. It’s a rare Cambridge eatery that has spawned openings in the capital (see also).
16. The Rupert Brooke
British, Modern restaurant in Grantchester
2 Broadway - CB3
In scenic Grantchester just outside Cambridge, this “modern and not overcrowded” inn makes an attractive run out of town and generates consistent reports of its “decent” cooking. And ‘is there honey still for tea?’ – as Rupert Brooke famously asked in his 1912 poem set in Grantchester. The answer is a resounding No: the owners seem to have missed a trick with their afternoon tea menu.
17. Market House
British, Modern restaurant in Cambridge
12/12A Market Hill - CB2
“A very well-balanced wine list” is an attraction at this autumn 2022 newcomer, which combines both a restaurant and wine bar (the latter evenings-only in a crypt-like space). Early feedback is quite limited, but says the modern British cuisine can be “excellent” (and The Telegraph’s William Sitwell was also a fan, hailing – in a very early doors visit – “wholesome, generous cooking”, albeit with a few “experimentally disastrous” dishes).
18. Permit Room
restaurant in Cambridge (West)
17 Trinity Street - CB2
Opening June 2024 in Trinity Street, the new brand from Dishoom, offering all-day food from breakfast nan rolls through to snacks and curries, plus a ready supply of cocktails and other drinks in a jolly atmosphere inspired by post-Independence Bombay.
19. Hot Numbers
restaurant in Cambridge
4 Trumpington Street - CB2
This “buzzy” trio (with live jazz at its Gwydir Street branch) has grown over a dozen years since founder Simon Fraser returned to his hometown from Melbourne, bringing a taste for Antipodean coffee culture. “All three branches including their roastery in Shepreth offer excellent coffee and light food, but their bread is the main event – it’s world standard!”
20. Fin Boys
Fish & seafood restaurant in Cambridge
2 Mill Road - CB1
“The superlatives are fully justified” at this yearling from well-travelled chefs Jay Scrimshaw and Richard Stokes, serving “grown-up seafood dishes in a charming setting”. It’s a “simple and informal place but still quite serious”, with “knowledgeable and passionate staff” and “every dish outstanding, in decent-sized portions and at very fair prices”.
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