Image: Nicola Foley
Three things you need to eat in Cambridge right now
1. Garden Kitchen sausage rolls
On the face of it, sausage rolls should be an easy thing to get right – after all, a union of sausage meat and pastry would have to work pretty hard not to be delicious, right? Sadly, as anyone who’s experienced a limp, flabby garage forecourt sausage roll will know, they can be an almighty disappointment. Not so these majestic beauties from Mill Road’s excellent Garden Kitchen. A pleasing heft of top quality sausage meat (sourced from Mill Road Butchers) is embellished with fennel and seasoned, enveloped in perfectly buttery, flaky pastry. A liberal sprinkling of sesame and poppy seeds on top gives a masterful final flourish. These chunky delights can be picked up from Garden Kitchen itself, both branches of Hot Numbers and Urban Larder.
Image: Nicola Foley
2. Bread and Meat’s porchetta sandwich
Step into this cosy Bene’t Street café and you’re immediately greeted by the tantalising aroma of the porchetta which sits impressively on the counter. Traditionally, this Italian dish (which hails from the Lazio region) uses the body of a whole pig that’s been deboned, stuffed and roasted. Bread & Meat use just the middle of the animal – tender and juicy – which is slow roasted overnight and rolled with garlic, rosemary, thyme, sage and white pepper.
The chunks of roasted pork, beautifully succulent and full of flavour, make for ideal sandwich fillers, topped with light-as-air crackling and served with a deliciously piquant salsa verde that cuts through the fatty meat. All in all, sandwich perfection.
3. Guerrilla Kitchen bao
Hands down one of my favourite Cambridge foodstuffs, my tastebuds never tire of Guerrilla Kitchen’s heavenly bao. In the ‘Classic’, the cloud-like steamed bao are stuffed with meltingly tender pork belly and a slathering of sticky hoisin sauce with cucumber and mint. It’s a perfect medley of flavours and textures which always astounds me with its downright deliciousness. GK’s other offerings are absolutely not to be sniffed at either – the ‘Fat Hen’, with its karaage fried chicken, jalapenos and ginger dressing, is another triumph, while vegetarians should seek out the superlative Herbivore bao, which features a lip-smackingly good miso mushroom, nori and smashed peanuts combo. My mouth is watering at the thought…
