You want to talk about money? Fine, we can talk about money. A few weeks back I reported my grim experience of the two-Michelin-starred Gidleigh Park in Devon, a joyless corporate retreat charging £110 for a five-course tasting menu with coffee and petits fours (though other, shorter menus were also available). In the process I managed to infuriate some of you by seeming to be one of those spoilt rascals who gets paid to write about food and manages, somehow, not to enjoy it. My beef with the place was that the prices were wholly unreasonable, despite the excellent food.
Well, it will hardly make your weekend, but I am thrilled to report that, as you would expect, two-Michelin-starred food doesn't have to be so forbidding. It can even come at a significantly better price. Still expensive, I know, but at Midsummer House in Cambridge there is both a 10-course tasting menu for £95 ("Taste of Midsummer") and the seven-course tasting menu for £75 ("Taste of the Market") I sample, which is outstanding. In other words, if you're going to save up for a starry Michelin meal, you should exercise more, not less, discretion – and heading to this Victorian villa just off central Cambridge is about as sharp a choice as you could make.
There is a remarkable absence of pretension about Midsummer House. Architecturally, it is underwhelming – a plain townhouse on the bank of the River Cam, adjacent to the common on which an excellent annual fair is held, and opposite the rowing houses of the universities' colleges, wherein some students obtain levels of fitness their peers think obscene.
Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/
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