Six dog friendly places to eat in Cambridge

At Quayside, we shorten the lead. The river is a distraction, the pavements require attention, and a dog has little interest in the distinction between a restaurant with a view and a restaurant that will let him through the door. Cambridge demands both questions. A hotel may welcome dogs without admitting them to its formal dining room; a pub reservation may secure a table in precisely the part of the building where ours cannot sit.

These six places make rather different promises. There is steak beneath the timbers of a former warehouse, lunch with a pint whose modest house label conceals an important brewing story, and a hotel bar where an inexpensive sandwich leaves money for a locally made gin. Two riverside pubs share much of their menu but offer different walks. Food matters throughout, as do the conditions under which we can actually eat it together. None of these recommendations depends on leaving the dog outside.

1 The Punter

3 Pound Hill, Cambridge CB3 0AE.

We turn off the river route at Pound Hill and into the Punter, where the prospect of lunch begins with a decision about which sort of room to occupy. The old pub has low ceilings and small corners; across the courtyard, the former stables provide a more expansive setting. There is considerable appeal in that choice when one member of the party travels at ankle height. A dog needs somewhere to lie without becoming the principal obstacle between kitchen and table. We favour a tucked-away position in the pub and leave the lead short enough to keep the route clear. Dogs are expressly welcome here, rather than merely permitted on a patch of paving outside.

The name on the beer pump deserves a second look. Punter Blonde sounds like a house brew, but it is Oakham Citra, the 4.2 per cent golden beer from Peterborough. Its existence owes something to a brewer's impatience. In 2009, Oakham's John Bryan encountered the then-new American Citra hop and had the brewery's allocation sent home by air. The first batch was brewed the day after it arrived. There were too few hops to make his intended strong IPA regularly, so the lower-strength beer came first. We order the Blonde: a small local label attached to a beer that helped establish the now-familiar appetite for citrus-scented hops. The pub also rotates guest ales, so the regular pint gives us a useful starting point without making the rest of the pumps irrelevant.

Lunch follows the aubergine rather than the burger. At £19.50, the whole roasted vegetable gets garlic, harissa and tahini, with crisp chickpeas, pomegranate and mint. This is a complete vegan main built around an ingredient with substance. Tahini, the sesame paste, supplies the richness; the chickpeas give something firmer to meet the aubergine. Across the table, coq au vin with mash, £21, keeps to the French tradition of chicken cooked in wine. There is room on the same menu for both, without either diner having to make a meal of side dishes. Our aubergine is dearer than the £17.50 bacon-and-Red-Leicester burger with chips. The reason to order it is the combination of sesame, chilli and pomegranate, not an expectation that avoiding meat will reduce the bill.

The courtyard is attractive, but we are pleased not to be dependent on it. Rain need not convert lunch into an argument about the dog, and the separate rooms offer more possibilities than one crowded bar. Mention the dog's size when booking; for step-free entry, CAMRA records access through the courtyard. The kitchen's afternoon break matters too: food runs from noon until 3pm, then 5pm until 9pm. Arriving after a long walk at half past three is a reasonable human impulse and an ineffective way to get lunch here. For a mixed party of beer drinkers, meat eaters and vegetarians, this is our strongest all-round choice.

2 River Bar Steakhouse and Grill

Quayside, Cambridge CB5 8AQ.

Before we can consider a rib-eye, there are stairs. The River Bar occupies an upstairs dining room, and that fact is more consequential with an elderly dog than any photograph of the Cam. AccessAble records more than fifteen steps between floors, with the restaurant and toilets upstairs. Check the current access arrangements if anyone in your party struggles with stairs; do not arrive assuming that a hotel-associated restaurant must have an accessible route. With our dog beside us, we take the climb and exchange pavement-level Cambridge for exposed brick, roof timbers and a view towards Magdalene College.

This is the Varsity's dog-friendly steakhouse, named in the hotel's own guide to eating with dogs. It should not be confused with SIX, its separate panoramic brasserie. Specify the River Bar and the dog when reserving, and ask for a position with adequate floor space. The attraction is the chance to have a proper restaurant evening together, rather than to prolong a walk with another pub stop. The eighteenth-century bonded warehouse helps: its former business was storing goods under customs control, and its brickwork gives the room a solidity that requires little dressing up. The river supplies the movement.

At the steak page, the decision takes a little longer. The 10oz rib-eye is £36, with a choice of potatoes and a roasted tomato. A £2.80 green-peppercorn sauce brings it to £38.80 before the optional 12.5 per cent service charge. The £84 tomahawk for two is the more theatrical order, but two rib-eyes cost £12 less before extras and allow separate decisions about cooking. We order them, choosing medium-rare. The marbling is the attraction of this cut over the leaner fillet; the long bone of the tomahawk contributes more to the spectacle than to our particular evening.

The restaurant advertises twenty-eight-day ageing, but its sourcing statement does not identify the cattle breed or farm. Anyone for whom those details justify a steakhouse bill should ask before ordering. “Locally sourced” can describe the address of a supplier without telling us where an animal was reared. At these prices, an interest in the beef need not stop at the weight printed beside it.

A bottle of Romero Gonzalez Malbec is listed at £38.50, with glasses available if only one of us wants red wine. Beyond the beef, the £18.50 Beyond Meat burger provides a vegan option with potatoes. That accommodates a companion, though a party primarily interested in vegetable cooking has more to investigate at the Punter. Here the dog comes with us into the dinner we have chosen, rather than determining that dinner must be a hurried sandwich. The warehouse and river make it feel worth taking our time. Book his place as carefully as your own, and settle the question of stairs first.

3 The Long Bar at Gonville Hotel

Gonville Place, Cambridge CB1 1LY.

Parker's Piece gives us room to walk before lunch; the Gonville gives us somewhere to sit without abandoning the dog at the point when the surroundings become more polished. Inside the Long Bar, a great wheel of a clock hangs against grey panelling. Pendant lights descend above the counter, bottles stand on illuminated shelves and upholstered stools line the bar. It is recognisably a hotel room, designed to accommodate people who are passing through as well as people who have nowhere urgent to be. Our walk can finish here without requiring an overnight booking.

The crucial distinction is between the bar and the formal restaurant. The hotel's dog policy permits dogs in its public areas and bar but excludes its restaurant; the Long Bar is therefore the place to specify. “Dog-friendly hotel” is too imprecise an instruction to entrust with lunch. We keep to the lounge menu, and the aubergine-parmigiana focaccia, £12 with fries and salad, makes an unusually persuasive case for doing so. The familiar aubergine, tomato and cheese combination moves into warm bread, a substantial sandwich rather than a token bar snack. It leaves room in the budget for something more interesting to drink.

Cambridge Dry Gin costs £6.50 for 25ml, with tonic another £3. Its maker, Cambridge Distillery in Grantchester, distils the botanicals separately before blending them. Basil, rosemary, blackcurrant leaf and lemon verbena join juniper: a recipe that makes the name on the bottle mean more than a local postcode. The separate distillations allow each ingredient its own treatment instead of asking delicate leaves and sturdier botanicals to behave identically in the still. We choose it over a more anonymous gin-and-tonic, with an interest in the herbs that goes beyond identifying something green in the glass.

For a larger appetite, there are full meals too. Steak frites is £22, including peppercorn sauce; the haddock at the same price arrives on the menu with chips, crushed peas, tartare and curry sauce. The double sauce is a good indication of the bar's ambitions: familiar pleasures, generously specified, without insisting that every lunch become an occasion. A discretionary 12.5 per cent service charge is added, so compare the total rather than treating the headline sandwich price as the whole bill. Food is served from noon until 9pm daily, useful when a walk runs beyond conventional lunch hours.

On Friday and Saturday evenings, timing changes the nature of the room. The free jazz programme, presented with pianist and singer Robin Phillips and Repmusic, runs from 7pm on Fridays and 6.30pm on Saturdays, finishing at 9pm. Music is part of the appeal, but dog-friendly does not mean suitable for every dog's ears. For a companion unsettled by live performance, we choose lunch and keep the evening programme for another visit. The Long Bar earns its place through this flexibility: an indoor meal with the dog, a distinctive local drink and the possibility of music, without having to buy the formal restaurant experience to enjoy the hotel.

4 The Waterman

32 Chesterton Road, Cambridge CB4 3AX.

Breakfast is a useful test of a dog-friendly city. Plenty of pubs can accommodate us after noon; fewer answer the question posed by a dog who has insisted on a morning walk well before anyone is ready for lunch. Coming off Jesus Green, we cross the river and make for Chesterton Road. The Waterman opens and begins serving food at 8am. It is close to the Cam, but it is a road-facing pub, not a place to book on the assumption that the breakfast table will overlook punts.

The walk is settled; the question now is eggs. Benedict costs £13.50, with Dingley Dell ham and St Ewe's poached eggs on an English muffin under hollandaise. The same price buys Royale, exchanging the ham for Severn & Wye smoked salmon. At £14, the full English takes the more comprehensive approach: bacon and Cumberland sausage alongside hash-brown rounds, beans, tomato, mushrooms, egg and sourdough. For our purposes, Benedict offers the more focused breakfast. There is no obligation to work through most of a frying pan simply because the dog has got us out of bed.

St Ewe is worth recognising. The Cornish business grew from the Tonks family's farm, originally a Jersey dairy operation, into a free-range egg producer working with other British family farms. The name identifies a supplier and a production system; it does not mean that every egg was laid in Cornwall. On a plate whose appeal depends so heavily on eggs, that is useful information. We have chosen the ham version because its saltiness makes sense against a sauce made rich with butter and yolk, with the muffin underneath to gather what escapes the fork.

A £3.60 flat white brings Benedict to £17.10 before any applicable service charge. The menu adds a discretionary 12.5 per cent for tables of four or more. That makes this a considered breakfast stop rather than the cheapest possible way to acquire coffee and toast, and the indoor dog welcome is an important part of what we are choosing. Keep the lead on in shared areas and request a suitable table when booking, especially for more than one dog. The pub garden offers another setting, but we do not have to make the morning dependent on dry weather.

The hour also determines the atmosphere. The Waterman promotes live football and rugby with Sky Sports and TNT Sports; a major match will change the room considerably from our early meal. A dog that finds crowd noise difficult deserves a check of the fixture list before an afternoon or evening reservation. Breakfast is our reason to return, with Jesus Green close enough to accommodate another circuit afterwards. The dog has secured the early start. At least the rest of us get hollandaise.

5 Fort St George

Midsummer Common, Cambridge CB4 1HA.

Across Midsummer Common, the approach to the Fort is part of lunch. We keep the dog close and make for the river, where the pub's low, timber-framed building sits against a much larger expanse of sky. The common is grazing land, not simply a conveniently enormous exercise area. Cattle are still part of its use, and a route that looks ideal for an energetic dog requires a different judgement when livestock are present. Give them room and retain control of the dog; a longer walk is preferable to pressing through a herd to preserve a straight line to the pub.

The building once stood on an island. Knowing that changes the apparently improbable position of an old pub out on the common: water used to separate it from the land we have just crossed. Parts survive from the sixteenth century, although enlargement and alteration have left us something other than an intact Tudor interior. Inside, the tiled snug and the river-facing windows offer different attractions. We look first for a suitable place in the dog-permitted bar area, rather than treating the entire restaurant as available. Leads are required outside as well as indoors, and dogs must stay off the furniture.

It is easy to let the setting do too much of the recommending. This is a Greene King pub with a recognisable managed-house menu; the old timber does not establish that the kitchen has a repertoire unavailable elsewhere. We choose the beef-and-raclette shortcrust pie, £17.25 with chive mash, vegetables and Merlot beef-dripping gravy. Raclette, a cheese more usually associated with melting over potatoes, makes the proposed richness explicit. That is a sensible order after the common, provided richness is what you want. Fish and chips is £17.95; the £15.95 Camembert-and-mushroom galette offers a meat-free pastry alternative, with a vegan version available by request. Check how that version differs before ordering rather than assuming the cheese simply disappears without replacement.

At the bar, the choice need not begin and end with the house name. CAMRA records Greene King IPA and Abbot among the regular beers, the former a 3.4 per cent session bitter and the latter a stronger 5 per cent beer. We favour the lower-strength pint for a lunch followed by more walking. Neither the historic room nor the riverside location requires us to turn a meal into an extended drinking session. Outside, the patio faces the common; a seat there gives the dog space beside us, though the lead remains on and a busy service route is still a busy service route.

The Fort is best understood as a walking pub with an exceptional position, rather than a restaurant to cross the county for on the strength of its menu. Its value lies in joining the two parts of the outing without making the dog an inconvenience between them. Book a dog-appropriate table for an indoor meal, particularly if the weather makes that essential. Once lunch is over, the common is immediately there again: no negotiation with a city-centre car park before the walk can resume.

6 The Granta

14 Newnham Terrace, Cambridge CB3 9EX.

At the Granta, we put the map down with the Mill Pond in front of us. The verandah and patio look over water, with punt hire beside the pub, and it is tempting to regard the next walk as a scenic afterthought. Sheep's Green and Coe Fen deserve more attention than that. These are floodplain nature reserves whose grazing animals help maintain the variety of plants: by eating vigorous growth and disturbing the ground, cattle create opportunities for smaller species. The uneven grass is part of the point. A dog walk here takes us through managed habitat, not an untidy version of a municipal lawn.

From our seat, we trace a route for after lunch, keeping to the firmer paths. In wet weather, old stream channels become visible across Sheep's Green, and even the level paths can become awkward. Check conditions before committing an older dog, or anyone with limited mobility, to a circuit. For now, the dog's water comes in a bowl. The edge of the pond is close enough to make an unattended lead a poor idea.

Lunch has a useful weekday option. Until 4pm, Monday to Friday, the £8.75 cod-goujon ciabatta comes with tartare sauce, rocket and a tomato-salad garnish. Adding a £3.50 portion of chips makes £12.25, against £17.95 for the full fish-and-chips plate. They are different meals, not identical portions in different packaging, but the sandwich is the more appealing purchase when we want to eat, watch the water for a while and carry on walking. The toasted cheddar-and-Camembert ciabatta, £7.95, offers a vegetarian alternative with red-onion chutney. At weekends that sandwich calculation is no use: order from the main menu, where the £19.75 sea bream with mussels and chorizo comes in a white-wine-and-garlic sauce with ciabatta.

Much of the menu is shared with the Fort. The meaningful choice between them is therefore geographical and atmospheric: Midsummer Common and the older timber-framed pub there, the Mill Pond and the fen-side walk here. The Granta has also received Cambridge CAMRA's Most Improved City Pub award for 2026, a more substantial reason to investigate the bar than the presence of water alone. The branch records guest ales as well as the regular Greene King IPA and the house-labelled Hardys & Hansons bitter. We look at the current pumps before deciding; a rotating selection is an invitation to ask what is on, not a promise that a particular guest beer will be waiting.

One booking detail can undo an otherwise good plan. Online reservations are for the restaurant, while garden tables cannot be reserved online. Because the dog policy refers to designated bar areas at the manager's discretion, contact the pub to arrange an appropriate indoor table rather than assume an ordinary reservation covers it. Dogs stay on leads on the terrace too. With a weekday sandwich and a place beside the Mill Pond, we have little reason to hurry. Leave enough daylight for the paths beyond the pub, and postpone them if the fen is under water.