Whoever the chef might be at the Queen’s Head in the village of Newton, six miles south of Cambridge, they clearly never worked for Farrow & Ball. The pub, a small establishment in a pleasant if nondescript kind of place, specialises not just in beer but its daily-made soup. The ingredients, however, are something of a mystery, as the staple variety goes simply by the name “brown soup”. Sometimes the kitchen will mix things up and offer “green soup” or alternative shades – including the dubious-sounding “yellowish brown”. No hint of the source of the colours (although the soups are designated “not suitable for vegetarians”) nor of the “nymph’s thigh” naming conventions of heritage paint-makers. This is soup unplugged.
On the oche
Indeed this is a pub unplugged: a snug place with a minimal-capacity public bar, an even more breathe-in saloon bar and a rudimentary games room where the shah of Iran once played darts. The beers are predominantly local and the pub is just one of five nationwide to have featured in every edition of Camra’s Good Beer Guide. The cider is cloudy, the gin comes from a nearby distillery and the juices from Cambridge.
Fifty shades of brown
The food offerings are pre-industrial too: roast beef or ham cut from joints on the bar, smoked salmon, British cheeses – everything ballasted by brown bread – and, for cholesterol embracers, toast and home-made dripping. You might suspect this is all served with a heavy dose of irony too, brown perhaps, but apparently not.
The Queen’s Head, Fowlmere Road, Newton, Cambridge
[Further reading: Beer and sandwiches: Fitzgerald’s in Dublin]
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