I was invited to the West Suffolk College this week to speak to the 1st year BTEC students in the morning and the Introduction to Catering students in the afternoon. Which meant lunch at Zest Restaurant and a tour of the kitchens in the middle. It never ceases to amaze me of the high standards and professionalism achieved by both the students and the lecturers in the Catering and Hospitalty Faculty. Bury definitely has got talent!
If you get the chance to spend a day or two in Cambridge then here is my mini food tour. Arrive in the afternoon and start with Afternoon Tease in King Street. It is very close to the bus station in Drummer Street and as the name suggests serves tea and cake. You can also get breakfast, brunch and lunch. It stays open until 6pm in the week. I had a big slice of stout Christmas cake with homemade marzipan and icing. The dark molasses flavoured cake had huge juicy chunks of stem ginger and figs which made me go straight out and buy figs, because sometimes you just forget how nice they are.
After a good long walk around the city, a little retail therapy perhaps and working up an appetite, then go for supper at Pint Shop, another new restaurant to the Cambridge scene and just off the market by the Corn Exchange. Meat, bread, beer, about 50 types of gin, 30 whiskies and a very good wine list. The bar was full but I got a glimpse of some scotch eggs and sausage rolls on the bar top as I walked through to the restaurant. I was by myself, but had a good time. Staff are friendly and welcoming and bring a plate of bread to the table once you are seated. I had half a pint of so'hop moor ultra pale keg beer, with triple cooked smoked ox cheek, horseradish gremolata and sprouting broccoli. The side order of mash was perfect to mop up the gravy. The puddings sounded really good and included a sticky figgy pudding, but you can only eat so many figs in a day. And so to bed..... there are loads of places to stay, look at Quality in Tourism for rated properties.
In the morning find your way to Norfolk Street Bakery. it is an easy walk from the Grafton shopping centre. Do not leave Cambridge without visiting this delightful, bijou, Portuguese bakery. Adilia bakes with her cousin Daniel and the window alone just calls you in. It is bang in the middle of a residential part of town and a little terraced property. You can get coffee to drink in or take away. I tried salt cod pie, a meat croquette , a suckling pork rissole and cod fish cake. Yes, I am a pig, but how can you resist, and they were still warm! I brought home a box of cinnamon topped pastel de nata (custard tarts) to eat later.
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Please book your table via the online booking form
We like Bungay. This pretty little town has some great independent shops and a market every Thursday.
It also has The Earsham Street Cafe. We were too late for lunch, but liked the idea of the savoury afternoon tea with local Shipcord cheese and homemade carrot chutney.
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Why have we been eating so many burgers? Suddenly everyone in Bury St Edmunds has burgers on the menu so we have been out to try some.
Benson Blakes were the first on the scene and are the established burger and cocktail bar in the town. They have won many awards ( deservedly so) for their offerings and we tried the Caprese (£7.85) a dirty great burger with sweet potato fries. Cocktails are damn good too. Staff are very friendly and the atmosphere lively and fun, especially when a band is playing.
More sedate is Graze Kitchen and Bar, known for their small plate, informal dining and established in the town for high quality, mix and match plates. But now big plates have arrived and include a Graze burger, pickles and chips. (£9.) We drank a bottle of Chenin Blanc from South Africa which was very good and added some small plates to our late evening meal. Service was slick, but annoyingly we were reminded throughout the meal that the kitchen closed at 10pm.
Third up is The Picturehouse cinema in Hatter Street. They serve a build your own burger. Choose a bun, a burger, a side and salad.(£8.80). Note pads and pens are placed on the table for you to write, then place your order at the bar and the burger is delivered to the table. Service is cheerful but it gets a bit busy when a film is about to start, so allow plenty of time to eat first.
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Benson Blakes in Bury St Edmunds has just taken over a country pub; not to make it into a burger bar but for a very exciting project. The pub is owned by the local farmer who will be supplying the pub with rare breed pork (Oxford Sandy & Black) with beef, lamb, free range turkey, wild venison and local game. There will be a small holding established early next year for herbs, salads and vegetables. The farmer will also be growing wheat, barley & hops for a microbrewery that will be established in the farm. They are also setting up a smokery and doing a full range of charcuterie meats and chutneys... Real Suffolk food !!
This multi function and award winning community building has a cafe, with enthusiastic staff and lots of homemade cakes. They tried to persuade me to have a full English breakfast, but for the sake of my arteries I settled for a capuccino.
Go upstairs to find out about the Pulham Pigs.
Maria Crick has always wanted to run her own restaurant and now her dream has come true. The new Cafe del Mar in Bury St Edmunds offers a tapas/meze menu with 3 dishes for £10. At the moment it is BYO wine, allowing for a very affordable night out.
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More...
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...especially the one in Elmswell who we promised to mention a long time ago and only just got round to doing it. Why? Because it's on our doorstep, has lots of great value choice, couldn't be more helpful if you want to learn about meat - and why would you drive all that way to buy meat from a supermarket if you could get it here?
This is the bowl of soup that I bought for my lunch at Morrisons cafe in Beccles yesterday. Presentation is obviously not high on the list!
This is one you need to book ahead. On Friday and Saturday nights only at 7.45pm in Middlewood Green, it's a farmhouse (converted farm building) with fine dining at a set time, with a set menu and a set price £35.50. There is a formula here, and as "newbies" we were welcomed by the patron/chef and given the format and The Rules.
"Help yourself to wine and serve it yourself" - Bravo for the affordable quality choice of wines.
"Food will be served, water topped up and bang on the kitchen door if you need anything during the meal"
Plate after plate of competently cooked food came out of the kitchen, but nothing blew us away. Service did the job, food was delivered, plates were cleared, more food delivered, plates cleared... but no interaction from the young and efficient staff, get the jist? We duly knocked on the kitchen door requesting another roll to mop up the pate, but there were no more available and anyway we would be "filled up with the other courses" This is the perfect place to go with a small party of friends when you want to have a good chat and be fed together, but I did feel that we were expected to say "thank you for having us" as we left.
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We went to Buxhall Coach House this week, it was fun trying to work out where to go in the dark... not much exterior lighting, so we seemed to land in what we hoped was a parking space, and found our way in by the candle lantern that was by the front door. Honor cooks and her mother, Sarah looks after the front of house, with the help of some shy young staff. This is not a pile-them-in and rush-them-out sort of restaurant, but has one sitting (everybody arrived at once on the night we were there) and service depends on the dish you have ordered; everything is prepared in-house. Their excellent menu makes ordering very difficult, and it took a while to decide. Honor is a fabulous chef and her abilty to work these flavours with a balance of ingredients, all of which were top quality, is a real art. There are only a handful of places that I could name in Suffolk where the food has a "wow" factor and this is one of them. My pictures are tagged so you can see what we ate but some dishes were wolfed down before we got a chance to take a photo!
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