Starry Michelin acclaim has lost some of its sheen as food culture has evolved; places that earn stars can be staid, stuffy, stale, or all three, and frequently feel like a waste of quite a lot of money. But Midsummer House, with its white tablecloths and starched napkins, gives a hint why the stars were attractive in the first place. From an overlook of the River Cam, the garden and terrace lend a winning homeliness to the proceedings, which are steered by founding chef patron Daniel Clifford and head chef Mark Abbott. Meals are dotted with little flourishes — like a cheese on toast canape that simply no one would believe is cheese or indeed toast, or a picnic basket of pneumatic, sugar-dusted bottereaux — that all feel genuine, rather than gimmicky. Midsummer is still on top of its game 18 years after earning a second Michelin star.

The Elm Tree doesn’t serve food. It’s a beerhead’s pub, in many respects, with a laminated book running the gamut of Belgian brewing styles and plenty of interesting ales on cask. But it’s worth a visit to enjoy those beers in a staggering interior, with armchair furniture, walls lined with beer labels, bottle caps, and posters, and come autumn time, witches’ hats stuck to the ceilings like stalactites. It may not be the sine qua non best pub in Cambridge, but it’s a standard-bearer for traditional pubs in a city heaving with them.

Dumplings, soup. This is the duo at Zhonghua, where wontons bob like buoys in hot and sour soup and the jiaozi come by the dozen, boiled, steamed, or fried (when they transmute into guotie). Established in 2012, the welcomingly unadorned restaurant also serves decent noodles, char siu bao, and a refreshing cucumber salad fragrant with sesame and hoarse with chilli oil. But locals, students, and tourists all come for the dumplings, anointing their meals with their own blends of soy, black vinegar, and finely minced garlic provided at the table.

This is a true Cambridge institution. In some ways, it’s the polar opposite of Dom’s Coffee, the other espresso provider to grace this guide, but both are squarely in the business of quality and hospitality. Plastered with old Italian newspapers and film photos, and sometimes showing Serie A on the TV, the cafe offers espresso oily and rich, with a panino or a slice of torta caprese that crumbles like the resolve of the diner seated in front of it. Darker brown and served in a bigger cup, the impossibly thick Italian-style hot chocolate doesn’t coat the back of a spoon so much as smother it.

If a blackboard of 20 beers, arranged by style and provenance, does not inspire excitement, then okay, this place is not for you. But there’s much more to recommend this modern British restaurant armed with heavy-set tables in a Grade II-listed building than its beer matrix. It’s just as winning to get a pint of bitter and a classic Scotch egg as it is a hazy IPA and a bowl of nuts spiced with aleppo pepper, black sesame seeds, and agave syrup. The steaks, burgers, and chips are all top quality, the latter rustling restlessly from the fryer, and the generous Moroccan flatbreads are genuinely excellent. Great for a hearty lunch or a slap-up dinner.

In a city of institutions, history, and prestige, visit century-old Fitzbillies for a taste of culinary renown. To get even more granular, visit for the Chelsea bun, whose syrupy folds of dough, punctuated by currants, are unmissable. The bun, and the bakery that makes it, were salvaged from permanent closure by Alice Wright, Tim Hayward, and head baker Gill Abbs in 2011. Despite the owners’ desire to keep the traditional bun alive, they’re willing to do evil to the original recipe in pursuit of the common good, like turning a Chelsea bun into French toast and slapping bacon on top of it.

This fish butchery and restaurant at the very bottom of Mill Road, almost right on the edge of Parker’s Piece, is a genuinely intriguing proposition, so forgive it for its name. Just the opening gambit at dinner, some bread served with a musky, savoury bonito butter, is a persuasive nudge. What unfurls is an exhibition in consummate fish cookery: whole fish, pastas (with an octopus or cuttlefish ragu, or more excitingly Berkswell cheese and more bonito), and raw dishes are generally outstanding. There’s a 10-course tasting at the weekend, but Fin Boys works just as well in its a la carte guise on weeknights.

Ordinarily home to the biggest queue on a road totally laden with good places to eat, Noodles Plus plays a trick on diners before they’ve even gotten in. There’s no fooling in the gorgeously greasy scarlet of the pigs’ ears in chilli oil, the generous servings of jasmine tea, or the hospitality from Dong Huang and Hui Yan Li, who opened Noodles Plus in February 2015 as a means of bringing Shanghainese specialities to Cambridge. It’s that little plus in the name, which represents the restaurant’s actual best dish. The very fine noodles be damned; the must-order here is a dumpling. Huang pleats xiao long bao to order with careful mastery, and they arrive at the table like little grenades, ready to burst with their deeply savoury, warming cargo.

Reservations are very much required for this one, and they go live on the first Tuesday of every month. After finding fame on Masterchef in 2010 as a runner-up, chef Alex Rushmer took over the Hole in the Wall, a country pub in Little Wilbraham, which, in a happy twist of fate, was previously owned by the family of Dom’s Coffee founder Domenico O’Neill. Having now closed the pub and established himself on Mill Road with Vanderlyle, Rushmer has become a strong, compassionate voice for evolving hospitality culture for the better, and his restaurant signals that intention. The elegantly bountiful dishes focus on fruits and vegetables, making Vanderlyle a sort of East Anglian analog to California chef Jeremy Fox’s ideas. Singular, sublime, not to be missed.

With no sign — just some carefully tended plants framing the window — you could miss this remarkable spot on Mill Road, but that would be a serious mistake. No pictures are allowed, partly to keep the experience from being spoiled for others; while spoilers in the context of a cafe might sound a little absurd, after visiting, coffee nerds and caffeine fiends will understand why Domenico O’Neill’s vision of hospitality is best experienced blind. A few notes: cash only, and you should plan to stay for a drink, so don’t take away. It’s the best coffee in the city, bar none.

Bedouin is an exercise in the art of generosity, strengthened over 25 years of experience. Though it premiered in 2011, it is a sibling to Al Casbah down the road, a mezze bar and grill that opened in 1997 and continues to thrill. But Bedouin has slowly become the jewel of the two, not for the Saharan furnishings and fabrics that never become even the slightest bit kitschy, but for the kitchen’s devotion to Algerian and Moroccan traditions. There are flaky bastilla; brooding, dank lambs’ liver; and towering tagines, bequeathed by servers like gifts and opened with a flourish, which might contain lamb shank, cumin-scented meatballs, or beef with prunes and apricots.

Amphora is the new arrival that, in a small way, clinches Cambridge’s ascension as a food and drink city. It’s always had quality wine bars, especially the service side of the namesake Wine Merchants shop. But — perhaps, in part, due to the fact that the strongest cellars can be found not at restaurants or bars but at the university colleges — the city has been excessively allergic to widening its taste in wine. Step forward Amphora, medical science graduate Cong Cong Bo’s shop and bar named for the ceramic vessel probably most famous for its role in ageing Georgian orange wines. The bar boasts an impossibly, brilliantly broad list that spans Portugal, Georgia, Armenia, Greece, and Moldova.

Upon stepping into this dinky space through what is unmistakably a residential front door, you might think this is a fairly standard little bakery. There are croissants, sausage rolls, cakes, and muffins. But clues start to emerge from the sandwiches on the blackboard and the glass jars filled with alfajores that something deeper is happening here. Adilia Frazao, who restored the bakery originally established in 1868, inflects the offerings with her Portuguese heritage. The gooey, flaky, sunshine-yellow pastel de nata would stand up to any in Lisbon.

Normally, when a restaurant is famous for what a menu looks like, rather than what’s on it, it’s at best a cheap gimmick and at worst something that turns from funny to kind of icky upon reflection. Not so at this brilliant village pub south of the city, very much worth a drive. The menu in question is the soup of the day, which is listed not by flavour or by ingredient but simply by colour, on a scale that goes from green to brown and is mostly, honestly, shades of brown (the restaurant’s Twitter handle is @brownsouppub). There’s a board of pies come evening, and a rotating food van on Wednesday nights, which might include local burger legend Steak and Honour (there is a restaurant location, but the real experience is from the van). But really this is a place for cask ale, toast, and whatever colour of soup is on that day. Don’t sleep on the “round of sandwiches,” either, which offers absolutely absurd value for the quality; you’ll find shades of pink, not brown, on the rosy roast beef and smoky, salty ham.