On Air at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire with Chris Mann

Chris started by asking who I am and how Cambridge Food came about. I told him about growing up in Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast — a place where food is woven into every conversation and every childhood memory. I spent hours as a kid watching Jamie Oliver episodes where he travelled to the Amalfi Coast, and I genuinely think those moments shaped how I see food: as something joyful, communal, and worth slowing down for.

Moving to Cambridge in 2011 was a big adjustment. I missed the Mediterranean pace, the back-and-forth with the local greengrocer, the way a town square could revolve around a single plate of something good. So I started Cambridge Food as a way to find — and share — the moments that reminded me of home.

From there we moved onto the places I think everyone in Cambridgeshire should know about — the spots that don't always make the top-ten lists but absolutely deserve to. We talked about cool, under-the-radar places to visit across the county: tucked-away cafés, countryside pubs, and the kind of hidden gems that make a Saturday drive feel like a proper day out rather than an errand.

Chris is brilliant at drawing out the stories behind the recommendations — why a particular place feels special, what you'd order, and what kind of afternoon it sets up. It's one thing to list restaurants; it's another to make someone feel like they're already sitting there.

Naturally, we ended up on Italian food — and I got to share my favourite Italian restaurants in Cambridge. The ones that get the pasta right, the ones where the owner remembers your name, and the ones that, for a few minutes, make you forget you're in East Anglia and not back on the coast near Sorrento.

These are the places I send friends to without thinking twice. The ones that understand Italian cooking isn't about fancy plating — it's about good ingredients, warmth, and a bit of patience.

Radio is its own craft. There's no edit, no second take, and the clock on the wall is unforgiving. You learn very quickly to speak in shorter sentences, to land the name of the restaurant first, and to trust that the listener is smart enough to keep up.

Big thank you to the BBC Radio Cambridgeshire team for making me feel at home, and to everyone who messaged in after the show — it means the world.

You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds. If you've got a Cambridgeshire spot you think the county needs to hear about, send it my way on Instagram.