porcetta Archives - Time for a coffee

I was in Cambridge for a conference and arriving the day before looked for a place to eat. I did think about going to Loch Fyne, where back in January 2020 I had enjoyed some nice seafood. However after walking down Trumpington Street, I realised that this branch of Loch Fyne had closed down it was now a gastropub, called the Little Rose. In the end I didn’t go there, and went to Côte, but had been intrigued by the Little Rose menu.

So when the next day, after a conference drinks reception, someone suggest that we should have dinner at Little Rose, I was happy to go along with that suggestion.

We hadn’t booked, and we were quite a large party, but we were given a warm welcome and they had space for us.

I had the porchetta. This was described on the menu as maple glazed porchetta, smoked garlic potato, puffed crackling, with apple gravy.

This was an impressive looking plate of food, though more pub than gastro.

There was a chunk of pork belly, the porchetta. It was glazed with maple syrup, but personally I think it was slightly overdone on the grill, resulting in a little bitterness. Not enough to send it back, but it was just over.

I liked the mashed potato, and the puffed crackling added some nice crunch. There was some slices of apple as well, which helped to contrast the rich pork.

I did enjoy my meal, but it wasn’t amazing, something I probably wouldn’t order again if I ever found myself back at the Little Rose.

The Piaggio Ape is a three wheeled motorcycle based truck, which is seen all over the place in places like Italy. Here in the UK they are quite rare.

They are quite popular in the UK with some street food vendors, one which I remember was outside The Brewery in London serving really nice coffee from the back.

The St Nick’s market on Friday had a yellow Piaggio Ape serving Italian pork or beef sausages in a roll.

I have seen them before, but didn’t really fancy what had been on the menu. However as I passed I noticed they were cooking something different, though the blackboard talked of Italian pork sausage or beef sausage, on their griddle was some porcetta. They had some to taste

The porcetta was served with salad, mushrooms in a toasted ciabatta bun. There was quite a choice of toppings, with the first one free.

I was really impressed with the service and the speed of cooking. The guy behind the grill, spoke a lot of Italian as he cooked, and he expertly took the cooked porcetta and heated it on the griddle along with (what I think was cheese, or could have been garlic butter). This was served in the bun with some (alas bland) iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and some tasty mushrooms.

The porcetta was delicious and I really enjoyed it, and it was something I would get again.

Tag: porcetta

Porchetta

Porcetta from the Piaggio