The Pub Formerly Known As The County Arms

The County Arms was kind of my local for a while as an undergraduate - it was cheaper and less crowded than the Castle across the street, with a friendly landlord in brightly coloured trousers and a dog that would come out at last orders and play "catch" with beermats. In recent years the management has changed and the dog has gone and it seems to have become less and less well used, probably down to a mix of grumpy staff, indifferent beer, and the existence of a rather nicer pub across the road. I'd been getting worried that it might be on the verge of getting turned into flats, but instead Everards seem to have taken another route and leased it mostly-free-of-tie to some sort of alliance between the local Calverleys Bewery and the people who run The Alexandra Arms on Gwydir Street. It's been heavily revamped and redecorated and has just reopened as The Architect.

The redecoration has made the place look a lot more modern - there's plenty of tastefully painted wood around, with odd touches of industrial chic and some slightly odd schoolroom style chairs that don't look particularly comfortable. It's not breathtakingly good, but it's perfectly convivial, which is all you really need.

The beers that were on when we went in weren't spectacular - Calverleys' Citra Bitter tasted more of wet cardboard than the zingy hops that the name suggested, and Buntingford Hurricane was a bit vegetabley and rather uninspiring. Alison's Moonshine wheatbeer and (keg) Titanic Stout were rather better and the selection of bottles in the fridge - mostly familiar US craft stuff from Anchor, Flying Dog, Goose Island - was respectable. There was also some interesting looking stuff on the "coming soon" board, from the likes of Black Bar and Oakham. None of the cask ales we had were completely clear - possibly they'd been rushed out before they were ready for the opening couple of days? The barman seemed knowledgeable and interested in beer, and was also more enthusiastic about the "coming soon" stuff they had in the cellar than about what was on at the time.

It was fairly quiet for a Thursday night, but possibly a lot of people haven't spotted that it's open yet. Hopefully trade will pick up, and hopefully they'll manage to keep a reasonably interesting beer selection - there's definitely potential here.

With the main review out of the way, time for a minor rant. Calverleys' Twitter feed (currently about the only source of information about the pub) describes it as having "local ales, fantastic food [...] and welcoming staff." I'm actually beginning to find that Cambridge pubs touting their selection of "local ales" is more of a threat than a promise. This is partly because quite a lot of local breweries around here are actually pretty mediocre (given how many excellent best bitters there are in this country, I don't really understand why so many people feel the need to set up making similar but less good versions of the same beer) and I can't really be bothered plodding through half a dozen bad knockoffs of Taylors Landlord or Adnams Bitter just to get to the one that's almost as good as Taylors Landlord or Adnams Bitter, but it's also partly because they're basically damning themselves with faint praise. "We can't really promise that we've got 'interesting beer' or 'exciting beer' or 'great beer', but at least we can say it's local..." If you think you've got the best beers available to humanity then tell me so. And if you're free of tie and you haven't got the best beers available to humanity then get them. (And if you don't know where to get them, then talk to Yvan.) This has been a public service announcement. Thank you.

Urban Shed, King Street

Coffee, food, and "vintage and up-cycled" furniture - Urban Shed is So Very Hipster. Tables are made from sideways cable drums, seats range from wooden primary school chairs to pairs of recliners that appear to have been salvaged from an old plane, and 80's MOR pop LPs play on a mammoth Ferguson Music Centre. Leaflets on the counter explain that the "space" can be booked for "your pop-up". If this sort of over-the-top hipsterism makes you reach for your revolver, you'd probably do well to avoid Urban Shed.

You'd be missing out, though, because - on the evidence of today's lunch, at least - the food is genuinely very good. Alison's brie, roast pepper and oregano mayonnaise panino was a rich, melty treat, while my smoked salmon bap was fantastic, the fish set off perfectly by some rocket and a poppy seed and orange mascapone, and loaded into an lovely crusty multi-seed roll. Unusually for a cafe, the side salads that came with the sandwiches were tasty in their own right, boosted by the unusual addition of a bit of caramelized onion relish. The coffee was also fine - more straightforward and traditional than the big fruity third-wave espresso at places like Hot Numbers and Afternoon Tease, but good and tasty.

Urban Shed forms part of an axis of cafe, from the relocated Nord on Sussex Street, past Stickybeaks on Hobson Street to Clowns, Afternoon Tease and Urban Shed itself on Kings Street. It's the least central of them, and hence seems to be slightly less packed than the others, but on today's evidence it's certainly worth a visit!