CAMBR I DGE ON A P L ATE
WORDS BY DR SUE BAILEY
WITH THE HELP OF LOCAL FOOD WRITERS, THIS MONTH’S EPICUREAN ADVENTURE TAKES US FROM CAMBRIDGE STICKY BUN WARS TO TRACKING A BISCUIT CRUMB TRAIL THROUGH HISTORY TO ANCIENT ROME
ou may ask why people want to know about food history, and why Cambridge is blessed with such an abundance of food writers with a lively interest in the subject. Dr Annie Grey, Tim Hayward, Bee Wilson and Lizzie Collingham are just some of those who lavishly spread a feast of words in books, articles and speech. Over this issue and the next, I’ll be finding out why this subject is so endlessly fascinating to readers and writers. When I meet Tim Hayward, owner and revitaliser of Fitzbillies together with his wife Alison Wright, he is fizzing with energy. He is a food writer with four books under his belt, who shows
a fascination for well-honed knives, DIY cookery and the neglected history of those weird kitchen objects: cherry stoner, anyone? He is part way through a photo shoot and putting together recipes and key moments from Fitzbillies ’ history for a book out early next year. This is to celebrate 100 years of Cambridge’s own “fancy cake shop”. It’s a six-week writing and photography sprint, but he took a break to sit outside Fitzbillies for a chat. “We realised that we were one of the last surviving high street English fancy cake shops – at no point had it pretended to be a patisserie or a Viennoiserie,” he
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C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
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