Pint Shop, Cambridge

Good selection of ales but horrendously expensive. Too many keg beers for my liking.Pleasant enough surroundings in the "modern style"

Modern-style alehouse / craft beer emporium, with basic furniture and light, plain decor within the two-part bar (with the front part forming the main - if small - seating area). Also has two dining areas (one upstairs). Busy on an otherwise quiet evening between Christmas and New Year, with a mostly young crowd. Only had time for a quick Iron Age Celt Experience (£2.00, half), one of six cask ales on offer, but with a larger choice of craft keg beers available from a total of ten taps. Well worth a visit.

This large, sprawling pub and restaurant opened in November 2013 and is believed to be the first new pub to open in Cambridge since 1999. Set in the heart of the city in a location that countless tourists will no doubt pass every day, the place is on to a winner and was obviously packed when I arrived one Saturday evening. I got the impression that this was trying to be Cambridge's answer to the craft beer movement, but with a heavy emphasis on food as well. You enter into a corridor running down the right hand side of the ground floor, with a drinking shelf allowing for overspill from the main bar which can be viewed through windows to the left. The bar has parquet flooring, with three rows of bench and chair seating between the front windows and servery which starts midway along the left hand wall. The bar back is a little unusual, as it is built around a window that looks out to an alleyway-cum-beer garden, but this is probably as interesting a feature as you're likely to find in an otherwise drab set of rooms. Lamps hang annoyingly low over the bar counter although ordering is made considerably easier by a large, easy to read beer board on the back wall. Here a doorway leads through to a small rear bar with very limited seating options and all of the handpulls, which were notably absent from the main bar. The corridor winds round to connect with the back of this room, before meandering onwards to a restaurant and garden (both unexplored). Stairs lead up to the toilets and a second dining room which was empty on this visit. A quick look at the menu revealed food that was notably pricier than seemed to be the norm in other pubs around the city, with the same also true of the beer prices. The cask range on my visit was Oakham Endless Summer, Oldershaw Endeavour, Hop Stuff Renegade IPA, Shorts Farm Strummer and Adnams Southwold Bitter with one pump out of action. Ten craft keg taps offered a mix of US and UK micros such as Weird Beard, Buxton, Hardknott and Moor. My pint of Oakham set me back £4.00 - typical for London, less so for Cambridgeshire - but was at least well kept. I felt there were a few issues here, not least the prices, but also the relative lack of space for drinkers and the rather uninteresting décor. I think I'd consider a return, perhaps to combine with a meal, but I ultimately left this place wishing I'd stuck to Cambridge's back street pubs rather than venturing into the tourist zone.