The Cornerstone Cafe

I was in the Mill Road area on the weekend, and saw a sign here saying "Best Breakfast in Mill Road - Butchers sausages". I was keen to try it out.

Cornerstone

http://www.papworthtrust.org.uk/locations/cornerstone-cafe
This is a cafe attached to St Phillips Church. Decor wise it's fairly basic, it has a community feel, with the kitchen in view, newspapers to read and rooms for hire with community stuff going on. But we came for breakfast!

Good value menu

The menu seems very reasonable. I went for a SET3 with added saute potatoes. I let my companion ride a small wave of order confusion. This is a pretty large breakfast for £5.75. We got black coffees.

Coffee was average

 The food came very quickly. I was hoping for good things.

The picture doesn't do the breakfast justice

There were many plus points about this breakfast. Many. A few negatives, the first being presentation - but it's a substance-over-style type affair. A bigger plate may have helped. Another issue was the bean contamination - but that's my mistake, I shouldn't have ordered them.
For the positives - It was piping hot - straight from the kitchen! The potatoes were really good. The sausage was a masterpiece, really well flavoured. Bacon was fine, and mushrooms were good. Tomato was present, but had become rather squashed and engulfed by the other ingredients. The eggs were also good, even though my eggs had suffered some "spatula rage". Seefud's plate was a bit better presented

Breakfast with black pudding

The toast was pre-buttered -  not to my liking. I prefer a dry crumb, and brown if possible, but still, now I know, I'll ask next time.

Pre-buttered toast

There will be a next time - There's an option to select breafast items for 75p - so I'll probably make my own options for a well valued tasty breakfast.

• Food     4
• Value    4.5
• Service  3
• Ambience 3
• Coffee   3

Patisserie Valerie

https://www.patisserie-valerie.co.uk

Known as a purveyor of fine cakes and gateaux, they also do a full English breakfast. For £7.95 it's the classic mushroom, sausage, bacon, tomato, egg, beans combination. Eggs only poached or scrambled though.

Troby
"forgettable"
On arrival, the dining area appears a bit more 'low rent' than the exterior, with stuck down tables (I think), like a Wimpy Burger place, but brown decor. We were served by an excellent waitress, who took our drink orders, and took my various fussy requests in her stride. Coffee was pretty good.

Double expresso, hot water on the side

I chose the full English with scrambled egg, beans on the side. The breakfast arrived in reasonable time, but soon the disappointment set in - as feared, rubbery eggs! like a dry cloud, no clumping, hard to get onto a fork. Also, some heat issues - a cold plate means that after a short time you're left with tepid mushrooms etc. Overall the flavours weren't bad, nice enough bacon, warm crumby toast. The quantity was good. I had issues with the mushrooms, teeny tiny fungi that felt like they'd been boiled rather than fried. The sausage was fine, but forgettable.

Unfried breakfast. Good toast.

There's a possibility that nothing here is fried (suggested by the no fried egg option). Now, that's not a crime in itself, but a lot of skill, timing and good ingredients are required if nothing has been near the frying pan. I think the whole breakfast fell afoul of that. Even the service let us down towards the end as our waitress became overstretched with the other tables. Overall - there are much better breakfasts out there for a tenner eg Cote

• Food         2.5
• Value        2
• Service      4
• Ambience     2.5
• Coffee       3.5

Seefud
""
Firstly, the service. It started off quite promising, as the waitress was attentive and took our orders well. She didn't push back when Troby started customising either. But the place was initially quiet and I began to wonder how she would cope if she was stretched. Not perfectly as it turns out, she lost focus just as the four of us were finishing and wanted to pay.

I'd grabbed a take-away doughnut a couple of times from Patisserie Valerie but never sat in to eat anything. It exudes a certain class (for a bun shop) from the outside, but inside the seating area was a bit of a disappointment, and there was no real atmosphere. The coffee was okay, if a little smooth and mild.

I had suspected the food would be poor the day before when I saw the online menu and noted the lack of a fried egg. It's usually a sign there's no frying at all going on, probably just an oven/grill and microwave. I had scrambled egg and lo and behold, they were over-microwaved, crumbly and tasteless. The bacon was dried with no hit caramelisation, and sausage and tomato were very average. The tiny mushrooms were a disappointment too. The beans were beans and the toast was toast. That's about the best I can think to say. Oh no, wait, I thought they got the relative proportions of ingredients about right and overall the portion was good. WHOOOHOOOOOO!

• Food     2
• Value    2.5
• Service  3.5
• Ambience 2.5
• Coffee   2.5

Lazydayz cafe, Wimpole

http://www.lazydayzcafe.com/

A roadside greasy spoon, bit of a rare beast these days. Conveniently situated for Wimpole parkrun...

Free WiFi!

 ...although I didn't see any runners, or cyclists, or bikers for that matter, hanging around. There was a steady trickle of not-conspicuously-athletic regulars, but it didn't get crowded.

Too much food. 1.5 Tomatoes

Fried slice is on the menu by default - Hallelujah! As well as the never-before-spotted cheesy bubble and squeak, which proved irresistible. I ordered the 'Tasty Tenner', which cost seven pounds (not a tenner. It's a mystery).

A word about ordering. Swaps are not allowed by the chef! So choose a breakfast you like and add extras. This includes Lorne sausage, which looks terrifying. There are some pretty good value options, and discounts can be printed out from the website (which I was not equipped with). Also the default coffee with the breakfast is instant or possibly jug: espresso-based drinks require a £1 upgrade.

I sat outside and the food arrived in about the time you would expect to cook it from scratch, which it appeared to be. Streaky bacon was a good mix between crispy and pliant. Lincolnshire sausages warm all the way through. Bubble and squeak moist and oozy. The fried slice was a fried slice. We're not talking gourmet ingredients but it's decent.

• Food 4
• Value 4.5
• Service 3.5
• Coffee 3
• Ambience 3

Cote Cambridge

http://www.cote-restaurants.co.uk/Cote_Restaurant_Cambridge.html

As far as dining in Cambridge goes, Côte is usually a safe pair of hands in many respects. You're generally not expecting to be blown away, but you're also not expecting to be let down. Like many of these chain places, that can see key kitchen and waiting staff turnover fairly regularly, it can suffer from inconsistency. "Life is like a box of chocolates..." etc. Would we pull a green triangle (Mmmm!) or a strawberry cream (eugh!)

Classic Cambridge window seat view

Seefud

GREEN TRIANGLE FOR THE WIN! Thank you Côte, it can be done!  An almost faultless breakfast experience!  Maybe... no, I have been suffering from sub-par breakfasts recently (cough... Bill's) but I don't think that's why I enjoyed this so much. I think it was genuinely a great breakfast. Maybe not 11/10 amazing in any one department, but just very good in all departments.

Firstly, it's a nice atmosphere and you can almost always get a window seat for breakfast. The service was spot on, a very professional waiter and service and delivery time was very acceptable. The menu is pretty good with the "Formule" offering being the stand out value choice. A Full English, choice of apple or orange juice, and choice of coffee for £9.50. The coffee was good and hot if unspectacular, the apple juice was pretty nice and iced. There was water bought to the table too, and life was good.

Côte has breakfast beverages pretty well covered!

Then it just got better when the food arrived.

There was a couple of rounds of nice wholemeal toast with butter in a dish go with it. Initial concern that the eggs were overdone was unfounded, they were just well basted but with runny yolk. The sausage done just how I like it, and a nice breakfast banger, porky and only a little herby. The tomato was lovely too, once I'd scraped off a slight excess of dry herbage. The only slight issues were the bacon was a bit old and rubbery, and I could have done with more mushrooms and the other half of the tomato. But very tasty overall, and not at all heavy with grease. I even had enough toast left over to have a couple of pieces with the good quality jam that was already on the table in a jar (nice touch). One happy boy!

I want to go back tomorrow!

• Food     4.5
• Value    4.5
• Service  4.5
• Ambience 4.5
• Coffee   4 

Troby
Hit the nail on the head!
We decided to go here as opposed to the greasier end of the scale today, and I'm glad we did. I've had a variety of different experiences at Cote, and today was one of the good ones. 
We got a great table by the window overseeing the hundreds of commuting cyclists - ambience is great here, with decent background music, and somehow a french feel, maybe a certain je ne sais quoi? Service was friendly and quick and our coffee soon arrived. 
There are a few options on the menu, I went for the "formule" which is full English with juice and a coffee included for £10. Slow service has been a bit of a bugbear recently, but the food came soon, while my coffee was still hot. The food was great. I went for scrambled eggs, fresh orange juice and brown toast, and there's also tomato 2 bacon, sausage, and mushrooms. All the ingredients were good, especially the sausage, which was a herby number, and the the bacon, which although was a bit overcooked had a nice smokey flavour. Another bonus was the toast, which was the seeded kind which gave good crumb. 
My only negatives were the small portion of mushrooms, and the scrambled egg was slightly rubbery.

Overall however, just what I wanted, a tasty and well valued breakfast served with panaché.

• Food      4
• Value     4
• Service   4.5
• Ambience  4.5
• Coffee    3.5

Bill's

http://bills-website.co.uk/restaurants/cambridge/

A popular city centre café cum restaurant with an attractive looking plate of breakfast. But is it good and is it worth the money? 

All that glitters is not gold

Seefud

A Bill’s Breakfast is an £8 breakfast, £9.50 if you add black pudding like I did. That's a lot of money so the product ought to reflect that. Good raw materials are a must and to be fair, apart from the sausage, they probably started off okay. And at some point, between ordering and the plate arriving on the table, the food was probably mostly in a reasonable state. But for some inexplicable reason, it took about 20 minutes to arrive it had all the hallmarks of having sat around under a hot lamp for half that time. What a shame! The mini sausages were dry and almost cold, the eggs were buffet style overdone with chewy orange yolk and the streaky bacon so crispy it shattered when I stuck my fork in. Maybe that’s how the bacon is intended to be, but that’s not how I like it. Anyway, the tomatoes were pretty nice and the toast wasn’t too bad. The coffee was fine and the service about typical for a Cambridge city centre place. I do like having water on the table so +1 for that. Having eaten here before I was expecting an average experience from Bill’s, but was left feeling disappointed and a little bit ripped off.

• Food     2
• Value    2
• Service  4
• Ambience 3
• Coffee   3 

Pastries

The food is good quality but as m'colleague mentions, there is an irritating variability in the serving time and temperature. Sausage heat seems to be a chronic issue which I've experienced on virtually every visit. On the other hand usually the food arrives quicker than today, and on some occasions it is sizzling hot. If you like bacon crispy it's pretty reliable here. I also like this place because it opens arly, especially on Sundays.

Now some issues. The table arrangement is infuriating, you seem to be everywhere right next to someone else, there are no cubby-holes. A policy of asking diners how the food is when they've only taken one forkful prevails. There's a Jamie Oliver vibe. And the coffee isn't that great.

I keep going back there though. It can't be that bad.

• Food 3.5
• Value    3.5
• Service  3
• Ambience 3
• Coffee 3     

Troby
Fir coat and no knickers! The food is nice, and well presented, but there's something missing - love from the kitchen. Quantity wise, it's good - two eggs, streaky bacon, 2 soughdough style toast, mushrooms, tomatoes plus 2 black pudding slices (optional extra). On first bite I tried a mushroom, they were slightly black and scary looking (which could mean they're old, or could mean they're exotic), but the main issue was the fact it was a bit tepid. This issue remained a theme for the breakfast. Nothing was cold enough to warrant sending it back, but the plate wasn't freshly made. The place wasn't that busy, and the wait was a little bit too long. The most dissapointing bit was the black pudding, it was great to get two slices, but it was so DRY! The ingredients here are of a good enough quality, and I enjoyed the crispy bacon and toast, but at £15 for a breakfast and two coffees, you are left wanting a bit better.
Ambience wise, I find the place a bit distracting to the eye, with signs and scribbly stuff all over the place.
The service was fine.

• Food 3
• Value 2
• Service 3.5
• Ambience 3
• Coffee 3.5

 

Browns

http://www.browns-restaurants.co.uk/locations/cambridge/

A more upmarket breakfast this time, which comes at a high price tag, £9 for a full English including 2 bacon, black pudding, 2 sausages, 2 eggs, mushroom and tomato, with toast. You are getting a large breakfast for the money.

Brown by name, brown by door

Troby
Sat out on the patio at the front, we were blessed with the company of "Pastries" today, who is known to cause 'order confusion', and predictably, it happened. To me. The charming waitress came for our orders, and didn't hear my mumbling of "full English", asking Pastries first, who went for that option, but needed to swap off his black pudding for another ingredient. When she asked him how he'd like his eggs, there was a 7 second pause before he decided on poached. Wanting to appear more decisive, I said for 'scrambled eggs please' (assuming that she was asking how I'd like my eggs done with the full English) , with Sefud going for the standard full english with fried egg. Imagine my disapointment when the orders came, and I got just scrambled egg on toast! It did look very good though. Anyway the problem was rapidly rectified by my friends offering parts of their breakfast until I had a plate that was probably more comprehensive than theirs!

Scrambled egg with donated extras

The food was very good - savoury, well cooked sausage, fluffy scrambled egg, tasty mushroom and tomato. The bacon was really playing second fiddle to all this lot, and was a bit thin, but decent enough. Apart from the excellent egg, the highlight was the toast! - seeded, and crumbly, it was toast perfection. The coffee was fine, my double expresso with water on the side got cold a bit quickly.
The best thing about this breakfast was my friends rallying 'round to give me extras, but the breakfast itself was high ranking.

• Food     4
• Value    3.5
• Service  4
• Ambience 4
• Coffee   3.5 

Seefud
It was a nice place to sit and check the stock prices in the business section of the paper on a sunny morning. The waitress was nice but whilst Troby didn't order clearly a really good waitress ought to be able to perceive confusion, and it could have easily been rectified with a standard repeating of the order back to us at the end. The food was pretty great though including some nicely cooked black pudding, and despite donating bits to Troby it was still a good plateful. That still doesn't make it great value at £9 though but that's the price you pay for enjoying breakfast without too many lefties.

A Full English half eaten or donated

• Food     4.5
• Value    3
• Service  3.5
• Ambience 4.5
• Coffee   3.5 

Pastries
My main fear about this place was that it'd take a while for the breakfast to arrive, which was the case, but probably only cos they were cooking it. Most of the food was griddled including the toast, which gave it a Turkish kebab feel (good). House newspapers were available: Telegraph, Mail, or for the left-wingers, The Times. Great service - even the best waitresses are susceptible to my force-field of confusion. The breakfast would've looked much better on normal plates rather than the enormous square things we got. Coffee was nice but small, I polished off two before the food arrived.

Overall pretty good and as you would expect: that is, a bit pricey and budget a bit of time for it too.

• Food 4
• Value 3.5
• Service 4
• Ambience 4
• Coffee 3.5

Cafe Carringtons

http://www.cafecarringtons.com
Pre-cooked bacon, sausage, mushrooms and tomatoes greet you in this downstairs cafe. For a £5 you get to choose 6 breakfast items (including prebuttered toast!). £2.50 for ok bean to cup coffee.
Was impressed by the quick service, very nice sausage, decent thick bread toast, large bacon portion.
The atmosphere was a bit lacking, but overall, good value, and good breakfast.

Seefud

+ Buffet style with fresh eggs and toast. A good format for a quick breakfast. Nice sausage.

- Nothing really special enough to make up for the fact that you're eating breakfast in a basement.

• Food         3
• Value        4
• Service      2
• Ambience     2
• Coffee       2

Troby

• Food         3                
• Value        4      
• Service      3.5      
• Ambience     2  
• Coffee       3      

Welcome

Welcome to Cambridge Breakfasts.

We review cooked breakfasts available in Cambridge.

Please let us know of any great places for a Full English breakfast in Cambridge, and we'll review it.