The Floating Bridge Inn

Do you like Brit pubs as much as I do?  Wait a sec…’like’ is too tame a word…crave!  The murmur of voices.  Glistening pint glasses of dark amber.  A row of hand pumps that tells you this is the place for traditional ale.  None of that fizzy stuff for a true pub lover such as you and I.  Did I speak too quickly?  What?  You’ve never been inside a Brit pub???  Good god, man!  Are you old enough to drink?  Have you completely missed the sublime pleasure of relaxing in a pub, pint in hand, and your troubles floating away like the evening mist?

You may have been listening to all those old saws about Brit beer being warm, flat, et-freaking-cetera.  Ah, so that’s the problem.  Probably think the food is bad, too.

Wander with me inside a riverside pub in Dartmouth, Devon, England.  The Floating Bridge Inn.  What’s in a name?  In this case, the name tells you the pub is parked nearly on the riverbank, right beside the Dartmouth-Kingswear Floating Dock, a vehicular cable ferry that crosses the River Dart.  Cars roll on and off all day. 

Let’s go inside the big white pub, which dates to the 19th Century, or on a sunny day we can sit outside and soak up some vitamin D-3.

The bar area has a lighter touch than most, with a nautical air.  They serve DoomBar, a local brew and one of my favorite Brit beers. But in this case, I didn’t come to The Floating Bridge for the beer.  Shocking, I know.  But, their kitchen shines like a star in the hungry night.  And if you don’t fancy a pint with your lunch or supper, they offer a superb wine selection.

Now to settle a few scores.  Brit beer is not served warm.  They keep the barrels in the cellar and hand pump it to your glass, meaning it’s usually about 50-60ºF.  The beer is top fermented in the keg, meaning there’s only natural fermentation and traditional ale is not fizzy.  Lots of flavor, much of which would be lost if the beer were to be served icy. Learn all the details at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_England

I often say English beer is a different beverage from American/German style, bottom fermented beer.  It’s almost like comparing tea and coffee. 

Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s let our eyes wander the menu and see what’s for supper.  Matter of fact, let’s make your mouth water:  Belly Pork with mushrooms, in a brandy cream.  Mushroom, walnut, and goat cheese tart on mixed leaves.  Plowman’s with English cheddar.

Pork Belly doesn’t sound appetizing?  Boy, are you wrong!  This is the most tender pork you’ve ever eaten, with a thin layer of crisped fat riding on top.  The sauce is out of this world and the dish comes with creamy potatoes.

Pork Belly

Never tasted anything to compare with the goat cheese tart!  Succulent flavors melded to lip-smacking goodness. The combination is so perfect that you find yourself mumbling about goat cheese and the soft, dark sauce that permeates the whole dish.

And the plowman’s platter:  Traditionally served at midday, but equally grand in the evening. Lots of subtleties on the tongue. Still, it has a texture similar to what you’re used to.  The flavor will make you tell yourself, “Just one more bite,” right after you’ve already told yourself, “Just one more bite.”  Note the dark, pickle relish, with its combination of sweet and tart.  Goes well with the cheese.

Notice that the English cheddar is not a bright yellow?  That’s because the Brits don’t add coloring to their naturally aged cheddar.  Has a mellow, more rounded, less industrial flavor than it’s U.S. cousin. 

No need to stop here.  Might as well have dessert.  Try the crusty bread pudding with a scoop of the famous Devon clotted cream.  Or perhaps some apple crumble, with vanilla cream sauce.  Either way, you can’t go wrong and either way, you’re going to need a long, postprandial perambulation.   Been waiting a long time to use those words, meaning an after supper walk!

Apple Crumble with Vanilla Cream

Bread Pudding and Clotted Cream

And, what a walk it will be in the fading sunlight, along the waterfront, with boats of every description floating on their idle reflections in the River Dart.

Visit The Floating Bridge Inn once and you’ll come back, for excellent beer in the bright sunshine, or a tidy supper in the lull of the evening.

The Queens Arms: Quintessential Gastro Pub

A Jewel of a Gastro Pub!

You’re asking yourself, what the hell is a Gastro Pub?  In the last ten years or so, a good number of London pubs added lively menus to their already excellent selection of beers.  Why bother?  You don’t come to a pub for the coq au vin!

As Lee Corso says, not so fast my friend.  The scene changes in front of our eyes.  We know that yesterday is not today, but we’re slow to grasp the subtleties.

There was a time, not so long ago, when pubs catered mostly to locals or special groups.  A pub in every neighborhood, in every district.  A working man’s pub, or a footballer’s pub, or an after work spot for the coat and tie crowd. They still exist, but they’re becoming more rare.  

Wanta know the ‘why’ of change?  Follow the money.  Take a gander at the London real estate market!

Now picture the pub owner who caters to a handful of regulars.  A new mall is planned, or the gentry upscale the area and the pub owner’s offered a couple of kegs of gold for his property.  Maybe, the pub keeper just gets too old to pull a hundred pints a day.  Too often, the pub just closes.

How do you tell a traditional, or local pub?  When you walk in, conversation stops and a couple of dozen eyeballs look you over like you’re a man who’s just come out of the ladies’ room. The menu seldom varies.  Sausages and mash. Shepard’s pie.  Steak and kidney pudding. Fish and chips.  Not bad, but predictable.

A younger crew takes over, less bound to tradition, more attuned to the Food Network.  Dreams soar!  Meat pies and chips (fries) get a facelift. Sauces, herbs, and other exotic flavors rule the kitchen.  Simple mash becomes buttery, garlic potatoes. Wine lists decorate every table.  A full selection of potables echoes from the mirror at the bar.

Better be good enough to compete with the restaurants.  Better be some place to take a wife or a date, and hip enough for the younger generation.  Some place bright and cheery, but still with that traditional pub feel and a fine selection of gravity ales.

Enter the ‘gastro pub.’  Brighter colors on the outside. Flowers outside and in.  More like a French bistro, yet still pubish.  Lots of dark wooden tables and bistro chairs. Brighter, indirect lighting, with a nod to atmosphere.

The food?  Definitely worth a second or third trip.  The Queens Arms did it for me.  Went there a couple of years ago and had a splendid assortment of finger food, along with some tasty ales.  Soon as I was in the area again, the QA sprang to mind.

Don't neglect the hard ciders.  Apple flavor without the sweetness.

It’s a tough place to find, tucked neatly away on a little street called Queens Gate Mews.  The complication comes in the name.  Nearby run Queens Gate Terrace and Queens Gate itself. Wait a sec, there are also TWO Queens Gate Mews!

It was raining.  Hard.  We ambled lost and forlorn.  With the hood on my rain jacket pulled up, my field of vision was a railway tunnel with blinders on.

In the rain streaked gloaming, I stopped in front of a big picture window, back from the street and about half a story off the ground.  I waved both my arms and got a young woman’s attention.  “Queens Gate Mews,” I mouthed.  She pointed to the right, then the left, then held up a finger for me to wait while she conferred with a colleague.   The two women pulled out a map.  Consulted a computer.  The rain poured.  They discussed the situation, again pointing left and right.  Back to the computer.

The woman pointed toward the door and motioned for me to meet her.  I was with my wife.  Opportunity lost.  I joined her under the front porch roof for an exchange of  finger pointing lessons on the map.  Success!  Cross Queens Gate Street, turn onto Queens Gate Terrace, walk on in the dark and stormy night, and turn into Queens Gate Mews.  There you will find The Queens Arms.

What is a Mews?  Simply put, a side street of former stables, now morphed into  classy apartments that only Bill Gates’ immediate family can afford. Mews comes from the roost for hunting falcons. When mews became stables, the name stayed.

This time, I needed something more substantial than tasty little morsels. I got it!  Chorizo and minced pork burger, laden with dark caramelized onions.  Light, herbed crab cakes.  The traditional fish and chips.  Also, one of the best selection of beers in the city.

Pork and chorizo burger. Dazzling! 

Feather light crab cakes with oven roasted, garlic potatoes.

Light, flaky pastry covers a chicken pot pie! 

This is not a place you want to dash into and dash back out.  Especially if it’s raining.  The QA is a freehouse, meaning they don’t belong to a brewery and can serve any ale they want.  There’s a photo of the ‘pulls’ on offer when I was there, but the ale menu changes often. The barman told me they had another dozen new kegs in the cellar. 

Make no mistake, the QA means eating and drinking on a semi-lavish scale, with a nod to both tradition and economy.

Enough blather.  Time to order another pint.  The night’s young.  The ales are perfect.

The Eagle

Welcome to The Eagle

Outside, academics continue...

Note the well scorched ceiling in the RAF Bar

A corner of wartime memories

Steak 'n Kidney Pie, with chips and peas

Let the world roll by, while...

You enjoy your pint

Let’s talk about England.  Wait a sec, let’s get more specific and talk about Cambridge.  No use stopping there; let’s get down to the basics of life and talk about The Eagle, one of England’s and Cambridge’s finest pubs.  Matter of fact, we can talk about The Eagle and the basics of life in one breath, but we’ll get to that later.

Everybody know about The University of Cambridge?  I didn’t think so.  It’s only one of England’s, and the world’s most famous universities, another being Oxford.  Matter of fact The University of Cambridge is a spawn of Oxford, germinating when a group of disgruntled Oxfordsonians (my own clever word) left the older institution in disgust in 1209.  Don’t know what the arguments were.  Who can truly penetrate the snide and foggy brains of academicians (not my own clever word)?  In 1231, King Henry III granted the new university a charter. 

Not organized at all like most American universities, Cambridge is a collection of 31 colleges and over 150 departments.  With a university this ancient, you’d never guess that the last association to be granted college status was Homerton College in 2010.  Google it to read more about its lineage.

Colleges accept their own students, hire their own staff, own their own property and receive their own income. Students of a particular college live and eat there, and also meet for small group teaching sessions, known as supervisions.  Thereafter, the academic landscape broadens and students from one college may attend classes in all the colleges.  The University of Cambridge awards degrees.

Kinda cool.  Students not only end up taking classes at many colleges, but are also encouraged to attend lectures outside their fields of study, giving them glimpses of multitudinous subjects they would never have encountered in an American style institution.  Boys and girls, this is called education and you probably didn’t encounter it unless you were Ivy League.

By the way, Harvard and MIT rank right up there with Oxford and Cambridge in study after study of the world’s best.

But, enough about expanding your brain and b-o-r-i-n-g stuff like that.  Who needs it when there’s a neat place to drink beer? 

I refer, of course to a quaint spot, nestled right around the corner from the city’s bustling market square.  The Eagle pub.

Bustling is not an idle handle.  The churn of the market, the buzz of the voices, the rattle of trucks and stream of bicycles permeates the city center. Hard to distinguish whether you’re in the city or the university.  They mingle like strands of a rope. The streets run from broad and open, to narrow and tangled, as though a horse-drawn plow had run amuck.  Cars creep through this warren of streets and alleys, but pedestrians beware.  People in flowing robes ride their bikes where they damn well please.

As I was saying, near the market square sits a pub called The Eagle.  Some call it a living shrine to all that college drinking establishments should be.  Two whiskey-stained bars.  Lots of scarred-top tables.  Lots of centuries-old timber, and memorabilia galore. Also, lots to know about The Eagle besides that they serve some of the best bitter this side of heaven, an observation I don’t plan to test anytime soon.

In 1525, the site was bequeathed to Corpus Christi College and by 1667 (a year after the great fire of London) there was a tavern in the same place, called The Eagle & Child. Don’t know what happened to the Child.

Remember I said The Eagle and the basics of life are intertwined?  The Eagle is where, in the 1950’s, the discoverers of DNA, Watson and Crick, often huddled over a pint or two.

But, that’s not all that’s special about The Eagle.  In the back is the ‘RAF Bar,’ where amid the tumult and death of the Second World War, RAF and American aircrews downed their pints, sweaty and bruised from battle.  For some it was their last pint. 

The walls are plastered with aircraft photos and squadron plaques, but the real show is on the ceiling.  Blackened with the carbon from candles and cigarette lighters, you can clearly read the names and squadron numbers and aircraft types.  Mute testimony to those who, despite great odds and the constant reality of death, held the weight of our civilization on their shoulders for six long years.

The food isn’t half bad either.  The usual pub grub, but surprisingly tasty.

Just remember, when you order your first pint, The Eagle is a place to throw care and time to the winds.  Linger much longer than you’d planned.  Bring a book, or sit calmly in the courtyard and watch the unfortunates, who don’t have a brew in their hand, stroll past. There’ll be plenty of time later to wind your way through the serene, cold stone of college courtyards and visit the fabulous Cambridge bookshops, like Heffers on Trinity Street, or stop off in ‘Chocolat Chocolat’ for chocolate as you’ve never had it.

For right now, just sit back, enjoy the company of academics and tourists and the silent ghosts of aircrews who never returned.   While you’re at it, order another pint in honor of the gallant aviators!

The world's best chocolate?  I think so.

Inside Heffer's bookstore

Glimpse of a college courtyard

Punting on the River Cam

The bustling downtown market square

The market is dead  center in Cambridge

Doorway to another ancient college