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The sign outside says "Great beer - No food - Angry barstaff". Nothing's going to tell you better than that whether this place'll work for you. Works for me.

As the previous reviewer says, it's been reincarnated as The Great Northern since just before Christmas 09. The new proprietors have plumped for a gradual ramp-up instead of a big relaunch, and things are certainly better than they were: prices have come down a little, decor has stepped up several notches, and I've found the service fine.

Some areas need more attention. The music is rubbish - 90s pop followed by crashing silence when I was last there - and they haven't yet got the food nailed: the menu is so small I suspect they are working from reduced kitchen facilities. But the places is looking great, the drinks are good, and they have a pub dog, so I can't help but want them to succeed.

Gardies serves the only kebabs/takeaway I will eat while sober.

A lot of sports clubs have the tiny Radegund as their de facto HQ, which lets it maintain a roaring trade without having to morph into a soulless wine bar, but also gives it a persistent aroma of running shoe. Don’t even bother on Monday nights around nine, when the “Hash House Harriers” decamp there to refuel post-run, unless you’re an armpit fetishist and happy to be elbowed out onto the street. That said, you’ll not find more honest or unpretentious a place in Cambridge, or one that treats its beer better.

Families have cottoned on to the child-friendliness of this Pizza Express, which is therefore usually heaving with small persons on weekend lunchtimes and early evenings. The enterprising management have packed the tables in, so don’t stop by if you’re unwilling to engage with the next table’s toddler. But the venue - the old Pitt Club, with its ballroom and grand piano intact - is a cracker, so channel the bambino-loving Mediterranean, dose up on olives and Valpolicella, and go with the flow.

A bit of a barn, and a bit of a meat market on weekends, but the staff are good. The kind of place where if you order a gin and tonic, they ask you what kind of gin. Cambridge doesn’t have that many of those.

Making the best of an unpromising location hard by a very busy road out of town, the Earl is a decent, spacious pub with B&B rooms and a large beer garden, handy for the station. Functional rather than characterful, it’s popular for football-watching (though get there early as several tables have an obscured view of the screens). Also does all-day breakfast on a Sunday.

I doubt the Pickerel would be so popular if students really grasped that Cambridge extends more than a half mile in any direction from Great St Mary’s. While that fact’s opaque to them, the Pickerel’s a pretty ordinary pub grappling with the inconvenience of its ancient architecture and getting a good attendance bounce off its central location. Decent quizzer, though.

One of very few places in Cambridge that feels honestly upmarket, Alimentum does great cocktails, good music, and a neat job of making you forget you’re sitting feet from some of the city’s most bogglingly complex roadworks and a Travelodge. I’ve never been anything but impressed with the staff, and even as a vegan have to admire the leg of cured Spanish ham on the bar for sampling alongside your martini.

Great food and surprisingly well-priced, plus a changing selection of beers, good wine list, small suntrap of a beer garden, open fire in winter, and set of board games to help you over the trauma of being separated from your mobile phone (their use is banned in the pub). Favoured as a meet-up spot by local groups, and - especially since it started opening before six on a Friday evening - as a place for local office workers to unwind. Don’t get your hopes up for a Friday lunchtime table unless you’ve booked. Toilets, accessed by leaving the main building, are a bit old skool.