NOVI, Cambridge

A huge disappointment to find The Fountain had been taken over as a rather unappealing trendy lounge bar selling overpriced food and no real ale. The ground floor is a European-style cafe bar, the other two floors not really remarkable other than conforming to the building’s original layout. The staff were not pleasant, the clientele were a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals and the craft beer selection was hideously over-priced. What a waste of such a splendid building and a piece of history lost.

Official site of NOVI - novicambridge.co.uk

Official site of NOVI - novicambridge.co.uk

The Fountain Inn has been revamped and I'm very impressed with the results. The decor is modern, with wide open windows to let the daylight( and fresh air in the summer) in during the day, and the place gets quite lively in the late evenings. The beer is top notch: 5 handpumps selling local cask ale from Elgoods and Grain amongst others, and good craft beer including both German imports and a really moreish Black Isle Organic Porter. A good choice of bottled beers also available. A good place to sit with a pint and read the paper, a much better choice than the Wetherspoons next door.

The Fountain Inn is quite an old historic Inn situated on the main Regent Street / St Andrew’s Street route into the centre of Cambridge. The outside view still has a bit of historic character, but anything inside has long since been removed by several successive makeovers, designed to make the Fountain blend it in with all the other party nightclub places on this stretch and take advantage of the evening crowds that flock to the Regent Street / St Andrew’s Street drag. The last one of these apparently, according to the barman was very recently, when it was shut for several months before opening about 2 months ago. I’m told the main things they did was to move the bar from the left side to the right side to reveal the windows behind the old bar to make the place lighter, remove the character 1930’s windows shown in the various photos attached and replace them with large bits of glass, to make the place lighter, put in a polished cement floor, to make the place lighter, and paint the walls Mauve and Green, to make the place one I wouldn’t normally set foot in. But the reason I did enter in is because they have also put in on the right hand side a large stainless steel bar counter which has a row of six ale pumps on it, with local brewery beers. These included beers from Elgoods (Cambridge Bitter), Oakhams (Bishops farewell and Inferno) and Adnams as well as a cider. And there is a fairly decent collection of bottled beers as well. Virtually had it to myself on the Saturday lunch time for a quick one and when the bar web site refers to it being a quiet venue during the day, that’s because it’s empty and doesn’t come alive until after 6.00PM when doorman control the entry policy and the place is open till 3.00AM with resident DJ’s from 10.00PM onwards.. When passing at around midnight later that day the resident crowd did seem to be more mature that the queue of youth and oiks waiting to get their ID checked by the door keeps at the The Regal and The revolution just up the road, so perhaps they can sustain five ale pumps as well as all the posh Lagers. Will not leave a rating as this is best left to those a lot younger than me who should be better positioned to tell if this place functions well for the target demographic or not.