Cambridge – Brewdog

I’m slowly and steadily (which keeps reminding me of strong and stable) working through the Brewdogs in the world and this is one of their newer ones, opening in Cambridge in 2019.

The beer board, with palpably enthusiastic staff serving customers. A nicely balanced selection of beers, although that’s no surprise in a Brewdog.

The bar is laid out over two floors.

I had a nice little table reserved upstairs near to the front of the pub. The staff members upstairs were helpful and friendly, this is a very laidback pub, but it still seemed efficiently run to me.

This is the Cranachan Killer, a fruit beer which isn’t normally what I gravitate to. But, I liked the description which mentioned the raspberries, honey, toasted oats and cream. So, it’s an oatmeal pale ale, with a rich taste of raspberries running through it and a slightly sweet flavour. Served at the beautiful moderately chilled temperature, this was well measured and not too sweet with a pleasant and smooth aftertaste. Nice.

Both of these burgers are mine, they were buy one get one free as part of Brewdog’s Vegan Monday offer, then the Government’s eat out to help out kicked in. So the burgers, also reduced by the Government’s VAT cut, cost just over £2.30 each and the beer was about £4, so a total meal cost of £8.60 or so. Marvellous value.

I didn’t order fries or any sides, since I thought two burgers would be enough. They’re both vegan burgers and I thought now would be a good time to try them, although I had low expectations.

The one at the front is the Temple of Seitan, which was rather creative. The seitan has a texture and coating sort of similar to chicken, although it’s not quite there. But the kale added texture, the tomato chutney added some sweetness and flavour and I liked the hummus. A perfectly acceptable burger. Both of the burgers came with a vegan beetroot brioche bun, which retained its texture and tasted fine.

But, that’s not the burger I want to write excitedly about, it’s the one at the back, the Beyond Meat Burger. It came with vegan Gouda cheese, chipotle slaw, roasted red peppers and pickles. Pickles are a delight with nearly any meal (particularly chicken bakes), and the peppers added some sweetness and the slaw some crunch, but they weren’t the main part of the excitement here. That vegan burger was a joy to behold (OK, I’m going a bit far now, I wasn’t at Greggs) as it had the texture of meat, a similar flavour and, actually, I think I preferred it to meat. I’d quite happily sub out meat burgers if this is the quality of the vegan alternative. It’s like the Greggs vegan sausage roll all over again, tremendously exciting.

Gloriously creative from Brewdog and they’re rolling out more vegan and vegetarian options next month which keeps them on-trend and intriguing. But, anyway, this pub was clean, the staff were engaging, the food was marvellous and I couldn’t find any fault here worth noting. I’m not sure Brewdog get much better than this, everything running to a high standard. How very lovely.