The Open Guide to Cambridge

Very friendly-looking self-confessed gastropub. The menu changes every day, though the barman I talked to said that there was usually an interesting burger on it; apparently the style is 'English and French peasant food'.

Has two private rooms, one fitting fifty at a slight squeeze or thirty in comfort on a selection of friendly leather sofas, and the other up to fifteen around a solid wooden table in a room with mahogany panelling taken from a London embassy.

(The Punter used to be known as the Sino Tap. It is completely different from the old incarnation though.)

See also:

• Cambridge Evening News review
• Local Secrets review
• Press release on Local Secrets

I went there with my brothers on 17 November; between the three of us we had confit de canard with gratin dauphinoise and braised red cabbage, sea-bass with potato-cake and cabbage, and a green-pea risotto. All pretty good, though the risotto rice was maybe slightly too crunchy, and flavoured with whole stalks of thyme which you had to remove. For dessert, one of us had rhubarb creme brulee and the other chocolate brownie; the brownie is enormous, and the creme brulee perhaps a little scanty, though nicely presented in two espresso cups. Came to about £20 a head.

Standard slightly-upmarket beer selection - Leffe, Staropramen, Hoegaarden - and a dangerously drinkable Addlestones cloudy cider, without the tinge of bitterness that afflicts a lot of real cider.