Ask those in the know where to eat in Cambridge and the first two suggested names are almost always identical: Midsummer House and Alimentum. The connection doesn't end there for Mark Poynton, chef-patron of Alimentum spent seven years working at Midsummer House rising to the position of Head Chef before going solo with Alimentum in 2008.

Alimentum itself has a fresh contemporary feel utilising blacks and reds to play off each other throughout the dining room, not a starched table cloth in sight. Accordingly, it sits comfortably with the current ethos pairing good food with relaxed dining, a restaurant that welcomes a bit of noise rather than a revered hush. 

New for 2012 is a kitchen refurb that has also seen the installation of a window between the dining room and the kitchen so you can watch lots of what goes on. The bread today, which is very good indeed, is baked fresh each day in the restaurant and it was fun to peer through the window and see the dough being kneaded, cut and weighed as we watched the process between courses.

Foodwise, there's a choice of the fixed price menu (£16.50 two courses, £22.50 three) which looked pretty good, barbecued pork belly anyone? There's also a la carte and a seven or ten course tasting menu. Daring as always to be different we went a la carte but doubled up on starters to see as much from the kitchen as possible.

Before the menu however there's gougeres, always a favourite, some popcorn (salt 'n' vinegar) and a pea mousse amuse with bacon and cottage cheese which provided a delightfully fresh start to the meal together with a gorgeous cottage cheese from a local farm.      

For starters, we saw four plates: quail, lemon sole, smoked haddock and pork. Our favourites here were the haddock which possessed a fine and delicate smoking paired with a well executed veloute. The lemon sole was another nicely cooked piece of fish with juice bursts from the grapes and chewy sweetness from the golden sultanas.

On the mains, two classic meats: lamb and beef. For the lamb, nice to see the belly presented which was excellent while on the beef, despite the sirloin on the plate, it was the beef cheek in the accompanying jar that was the star of the show in our view. Pressure cooked in red wine and beef stock before being shredded and put back in the sauce together with a ragu style veg mix. The intense richness of this beef cheek mix saw it power past its more esteemed plate mate for beef loving flavour and I could have happily had a dish of this alone. 

A pre dessert of apple and cucumber sorbet with pickled apple was nicely refreshing. On main desserts, the chocolate pave sounded good but contained the somewhat polarising popping candy. We're not fans of the return of this '70s childhood moon dust reborn into upmarket dining so the restaurant kindly replaced it with the passionfruit with its perhaps more daring use of saffron which worked well so long as you're a saffron fan. The milk jam mousse had lots of enjoyable elements, was slightly less daring but still enjoyed.  

Alimentum is a vibrant restaurant with an enjoyable atmosphere even during a lunch service; in the evening, with a buzz from the very well maintained bar also, we can imagine its quite the place to be in Cambridge. With Chef Mark Poynton's background in fine dining, he's clearly got the heritage to put Alimentum on the map and while this is still, in the scheme of things, early days for him as Chef Patron, he's already making a lot of people sit up and take notice. We enjoyed our meal here today and expect to hear a lot more about Alimentum in the future.


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Related links

Alimentum website

Mark Poynton on Twitter