A Lunch In Cambridge. Fancett’s

Three courses. Six bottles. One lunch.

Cambridge is, like many touristy cities, not actually that great a place to meet up for lunch. Yes, we have various high-end restaurants that do Michelin-quality food, but you’ll need to be a Cambridge Millionaire or lottery-winner to consider splurging up to four figures on casual midweek dining.

Given this, your choices in Cambridge are largely:

As a result, Mrs CWB and I tend not to eat out much in our hometown. So, when an email dropped in my inbox from a friend who lives out in the sticks saying he was coming to Cambridge with a friend: would I like to join them and if so, where should we meet? my response was: yes but I’ve no idea where.

We eventually whittled it down to Fancett’s which is something of an exception in Cambridge in that scores highly for both keen pricing and food quality. Add in corkage and proximity to both the train station and my part of town and it was a slam-dunk.

The restaurant describes itself as a “small, independent French-influenced bistro”, while the Michelin guide sums it up as “friendly … brings a generous dose of enthusiasm … great care and skilled craft … generously portioned dishes that are French to their core”.

We opted for the prix fixe menu with a side of in-season local asparagus and discussed corkage with the sommelier based on us bring two bottles each for a tasting lunch, rather than planning to consume six entire bottles between us.

For what ended up being a very reasonable sum, the sommelier fixed us up with red and white glasses each, decanters for the reds, chillers for the whites and a large bottle of tap water.

We began with one of my choices, a mature high-altitude, cool-climate Chardonnay from Eden Valley’s Mountadam, bought on markdown from Justerini’s.

**Mountadam, Estate Chardonnay, High Eden, 2018 (£12 in sale, Justerini & Brooks)**

A classic, Burgundian Chardonnay, very elegant and poised, still youthful. I’m biased, but I thought this was a lovely wine and a great aperitif / match for cod roe starters:

For mains of guinea fowl, we went with James’ Pommard, that had been bought while driving to a boy’s ski-ing holiday one half-term. Mark explained that the logic had gone like this:

• cheaper to drive than fly
• cheaper crossing a day earlier, so we can take the scenic route
• turns out to be even cheaper crossing a day before that; we can wind our way through Burgundy and pick up some wines to save even more money

With no particular planning ahead, stop-offs were driven more by who was bored, wanted to stretch their legs or needed the loo. And yet, they pulled off a doozy in Pommard. I make no secret of struggling with Pinot in general and red Burgundy in particular, but this was plush, dark fruited, complex and harmonious.

**Domaine Georges Joillot, Pommard Les Noizons 2021 (ex-cellar, also St Andrews Wine)**

red and dark berry fruits with damp earth; precise, with ripe, fine-grained tannins and lively acidity

We also threw into the mix some more classic mature reds

La Parde de Haut-Bailly 2009, (£40, Private Cellar)

Another of my contributions, this is a Pessac-Léognan second wine from a Classed Growth in a Legendary year. Classic bramble fruits, oaky spice and aged character with great elegance.

Another Classed Growth property from 2009, this is menthol, cassis and cedar all wrapped around an elegant, sleek core.

**Domaine de PegauChâteauneuf-du-Pape ( BBR)**

Mark had forewarned us that this would be either fantastic or completely dead. In the end, it was in great shape — mature, secondary and hedonistic; savoury and rich, with meatiness and macerated plum.

Over the expansive reds, with introductions and catch-up chat completed, we turned to business strategies; how some business journeys succeed where others, following an apparently very similar approach, fail (spoiler: it’s mainly down to management’s quality of execution)

Finally, on to pudding.

Mark and I opted for the cheese course to continue with the dry wines.

James went for affogato.

Our final wine in the line-up was the curious-but-amazing De Bortoli All Rounder Dry Botrytis Semillon. A generation-old, botrytised Semillon from Australia that has been fermented to (almost) dryness. Rich, savoury, spicy and complex, it matches perfectly with hard yellow cheese plus crackers and membrillo.

**De Bortoli All Rounder Dry Botrytis Semillon 2002, Riverina (£6.50, Majestic)**

kerosene, diesel with dried apricots, orange marmalade, dried hazelnuts and lanolin; fresh and complex, it is bonkers but wonderful.

With late-afternoon approaching and service ending, we settled up and decamped back to the pub round the corner where Mark and James had enjoyed a pre-meal warm up — The Devonshire Arms.

Camra will tell you of The Devonshire: rescued from decline and opened in 2010 as Milton Brewery’s first pub in Cambridge, just off Mill Road, the Dev attracts a mix of characters for beer, food and a chat. Awards include Cambridge & District Branch Cider Pub of the Year 2024 & 2025 plus Cambridgeshire CAMRA Cider Pub of the Year 2025.

Greeted like long lost friends, we were given wine glasses, invited to sit wherever we liked and charged not a penny for the privilege of doing so.

We re-tasted everything and I picked out my two wines of the meal to take back home, where I headed up to bed for a post-prandial snooze to sleep off the excesses of the day (my excuse is that I had been working really hard with the day job up to this point).

Waking a couple of hours later, I made my way down to the kitchen to find Mrs CWB and #1 child polishing of the wines with some supper — which accounts for the lack of any detailed tasting notes.

Originally published at https://cambridgewineblogger.substack.com.