The Free Press

This is an excellent traditional pub in Cambridge just hidden away from the shops. It has a small snug and old printing press holders contains an array of precious customers tid bits.

Great no-​nonsense local pub with good pub food and range of beers. Staff are very friendly and there’s a selection of board games. TV gets brought out for significant sports matches and guitar gets played if you’re unlucky to be there with an amateur musician.
We go there all the time in groups to catch up among friends.

By far one of the best pubs in all of Cambridge. Votes the Cambridge News 2015 Pub of the Year. Serving a great mix of local and regular ales, beers, wines, whiskeys & spirits.
Both lunch & dinner served by the Free Press Kitchen — with amazing burgers, mains, ploughman’s platter and many gluten-​free options as well. Also steak & ale pies and award-​winning Scotch eggs.
A great local, cozy & warm, with many eclectic regulars. A must-​stop pub if you are in Cambridge!

This is one of our friend’s all-​time fav pubs to visit when he comes home to Cambridge, as he now has lived in the U.S. for the past couple years, and my husband and I can certainly see why!
We loved the variety and amount of board games (simple ones from Hang Man to more intellectual like Trivial Pursuit), and of course, we also appreciated being able to do a flight of three cask-​conditioned ales on tap. For locals, there are also bottles from all over world including a few microbrews from the U.S. that I recognized.
There are restaurants/​caterers with pop-​up kitchens, but we didn’t get to try any food, as we usually had just eaten somewhere else and would drop by here afterward or started the night here. It feels very hip and young at night, with a lively crowd.

This pub was everything you’d want in a nice local pub. Friendly folks, good beers, and a nice little outdoor area in the back. It’s not a big place, but we had no trouble finding a place to sit.
The night I was there, they had a local Indian restaurant serving Indian food. It was quite reasonable in terms of price and outstanding in terms of flavour. I enjoyed the vegetarian thali more than I’ve enjoyed almost any Indian food anywhere.
So there are lots of things to like, and really nothing to dislike. A good pub worth stopping by again.

Amazing pub, originally opened in 1851, still with hand cranked draughts. The sausages and service are great, and the beer selection fantastic. Cheers!

Real nice local pub with very good food. No TV, no yelling music box, open fire, very cosy!

For some reason even though I’ve been visiting Cambridge for almost 10 years it’s never occurred to me to seek out the pub lunches. I don’t know what I was thinking! Started off this trip at The Free Press (conveniently located close-​ish to the Norfolk St Bakery). The pub had some great reviews on Unilocal but at 12:30 it was pretty empty and I was worried that maybe it wasn’t that great. But the menu sounded so good and by 1pm it was full — mostly with older local employees, no students.
We ordered a round and a pork/​leek sausage & mash for hubby and a black pudding ham hock hash with egg over toast for me. How much more traditional can you get? They do have some lighter options as well in case you’re interested but I didn’t see the point in ruining a pub lunch with salad. All dishes are only £7.50−8.50.
The food took a while to come out. It appeared as if the kitchen was in the back, as in the back patio and not connected to the pub. Toilets were also out in the back patio — no loitering in the cold winter! The pub has a worn in ramshackle look and appeal. No frills for sure. Hard tables and chairs. Awesome no cell phone policy inside.
The food was exactly what I wanted and expected. Both dishes tasted home-​cooked and yummy. The black pudding ham hock with egg was a good greasy lunch. Very meaty and rich. I couldn’t finish it. A little too much meat for me (bur probably not for most other people). If you’re looking for a good English pub lunch I would definitely recommend this one.

Lovely back street local and serving an excellent pint of GK Mild. I make a point of coming here for the mild as it’s so rare to find. Good mix of locals and cheery staff.

Excellent laid back friendly pub. Well kept ales. Good place to drink, relax & chat!

Mediocre cask selection, and everyone here was over the age of 50, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It’s a proper old school pub and a nice break from the more student-​y parts of town.

old-​school pub, hideaway kind of place, reservations on almost every table though, not a lot of tables, not a lot of space to be honest, but its got a great atmosphere and the people are really nice

a pub doesn’t get much better than this. good beer on tap, cozy but daylit interior, a patio out back, and good food. you must stop in if Cambridge is on your list.

Having finished our Cambridge Bike tour, we were pretty gasping for a decent pint and some real food.
The hidden-​away Free Press didn’t disappoint. It’s a proper pub, like they should be. Three separate bars — including one designed, apparently, for thirsty dwarves. Plenty of real beer on tap — good range, well-​kept and well-​served. The staff were young, fun and friendly.
We ordered from the small-​but-​excellent menu. We went with the Ploughman’s. Now in most pubs, this is a recipe for disappoint/​misery/​death/​. But not at the Free Press. Every component was fresh, delicious and innovative. And plenty of it!
Hard to fault.
Sadly, I don’t live in Cambridge, but if I did I would live in the Free Press.

Amazing
FACT
The lover and I spent an evening in this cosy bar one Friday night after finding it on
…as Count Merlot (the English Setter) was allowed to join us!
Amazing food, amazing ale, amazing ambiance and amazing landlord… that didn’t mind when merlot decided that he had had enough of sitting on the floor and was going to sit at the table in about a square foot of bench (he’s quite a big dog, this was no mean feat!)…he might even be appearing on the pub website!
If we lived in Cambridge, this would be a regular!

This is somewhere between 3.5 stars to 4 stars. The local favorite serves traditional English fare, and is a nice quaint place tucked in a small alley.
I tried black pudding for the first time at the Free Press as part of the Lancashire salad, and again as part of the full English breakfast, and it was excellent! You can also find white pudding and haggis here, which were as good as white pudding and haggis can get, I think.
Dessert-​wise, I highly recommend ordering the Cornish ice cream AND the sticky toffee sponge cake and eat them together. Despite a small amount of tiny ice crystals in the Cornish ice cream, it had a rich, luxurious creamy texture, and the coldness played a nice contrast to the hot and gooey sticky toffee sponge cake. (I do not recommend the chocolate torte though, since the sugar in it had a crystalline, grainy texture that reminded me of a failed brownie…)

«SMALL HIDDEN GEM»
I’m not a big bar fan, but this is a place you cannot miss. What i like about it is that this place has character. The bartender really enjoys what he does and entertains everyone who comes in. If you have ever watched «Cheers,» well this is the closest you are going to get.
Now i’m a foodie and for bar food they have is good stuff. I would have to say it’s a step above the rest. I don’t even know if you can call it bar food because it actually has enough variety to be called a restaurant. For example bangers and mash which is classic bar item, they usually have 2 or 3 different types of sausages you can choose from. Last time I went I got a chicken with chocolate mole sauce. Not your typical bar food. What is even better is that their menu changes what seems like weekly.
Great small local pub, excellent food, and friendly people!

You’ll love this pub if you like a small intimate atmosphere, the gentle noise of chat (no music) well kept beer and good value, home-​cooked food. I love itvery friendly and welcoming.

Actually, I CAN believe that Nick L. is the first to review «this gem of a boozer.» Not because it’s not three-​quarters decent, mind you. It’s actually a very cool little pub, pretty much the idyllic type of place to while away the hours when you should be cramming for that late-​Victorian Gothic Poets exam. But it’s just so damn hard to find!!! I mean, there’s only one way in, and only one way out. You’ve gotta run through a labriynth of dingy-​looking residential apartment dwellings before coming to this place.
That being said, was it worth it? Yes. Had a good day, a few good pints, a pretty good black coffee and the bartender (who looked all of about 14) kept us happy with stiff drink and conversation.

I can’t believe I’m the first to review this gem of a boozer. Great food, excellent beers and a patio out the back which just begs for evening drinking in the summer months.
There is plenty of places to tie you bike up in the area and there is even a car park 1 min walk away if your driving in.
Its another Green King pub but has a great selection of other ales on as well as the odd continental lager.
Rory McGrath was in here last time (I believe he is a regular and lives around the corner).
Its in my top 5 Cambridge pubs without a doubt and I cannot wait to go back.