Restaurant 22

Restaurant 22 occupies a discrete Victorian terrace on Chesterton Road, three minutes' walk from Midsummer Common and the Cam. The dining room is small — twenty-six covers across two services — with white-painted walls, original fireplaces, and a single open-pass kitchen visible from every table. Chef-patron Sam Carter took over the restaurant in 2018, won a Michelin star in 2022, and has held it through every guide since.

The cooking is Modern British with a strong fermentation and fire-cooking emphasis. A signature dish of cured Loch Duart salmon with smoked roe and dill oil; aged duck with kohlrabi, plum and a Yorkshire-rapeseed jus; barbecued sweetbreads with morels and a sherry-aged vinegar reduction; a dessert of cultured cream, blackcurrant and rye. The seven-course tasting menu runs about two and a half hours and rotates seasonally; the kitchen prints the producer's name beside each dish.

The wine programme is unusually adventurous. Sommelier Charlotte Wilde leans into low-intervention English wines (the Tillingham and Westwell rows are the best in any UK regional kitchen), small-grower Burgundy, and a serious Loire and Jura section. Pairings are strongly recommended and run at significantly less than the equivalent at Midsummer House.

Service is hands-on, multilingual and warm — Sam Carter himself often delivers the final dessert course to each table. The room's intimacy is the point: every booking feels personal in a way that the larger starred kitchens cannot replicate. Restaurant 22 is the booking the Cambridge regulars rebook on every visit, and is, on a value-per-star basis, one of the best deals in UK fine dining.

Restaurant 22 is a deal-closing dinner where you want the cooking to lead the conversation. The seven-course tasting is exactly long enough for a substantive evening conversation without overrunning the meal; the small-room acoustic is conducive to quiet talk; and the wine list handles a serious order with grace. The Chesterton location is also discreet — well outside the tourist orbit of King's Parade. For a small business dinner that needs to be substantive, this is the most appropriate room in Cambridge.