Inn and venue · The High South
Dellar's Chop Room
Dellar's Chop Room is a dining house in Chalkwater Street, Cambridge, kept by James Dellar. Yard masters and examiners dine there, and it is known for good chops and serious company. An ordinary is served at one o'clock for one shilling and fourpence, a price Newling's Ordinary on Bridge Street matches on examination days. It lies away from Bell Row, where cheaper food is sold at the shift change.
- Within
- Chalkwater Street
- Named in
- Travelling Britannia
History and lore
Chalkwater Street, the widest road in Cambridge and never a quiet one, carries the wagons in from Carriage Gate as far as the assay courts. Partway along it, Dellar's Chop Room offers the yard masters and examiners of the town a calmer table than the crush of Bell Row.
James Dellar keeps it. The ordinary is laid at one o'clock for a shilling and fourpence, and the chops are the house's pride. The company is serious: men who decide which work passes and which fails dine here among their equals, and conversation runs on tolerances, licences and the week's assays. Newling's on Bridge Street charges the same on examination days, but there the tables belong to nervous applicants, and the masters prefer Dellar's.
A stranger may eat at Dellar's for the price of the ordinary, though he is advised to listen more than he talks. Cambridge holds that the chops are the best in the liberty, and that more than one career has been quietly settled across its tables.
Where the volumes speak of it
- LiB2 › Chapter 3 — Cambridge › 3.11 What Things Cost
- LiB2 › 3.6 Cook-Shops, Chop Rooms, and Coffee Rooms
- LiB2 › 3.11 What Things Cost
- LiB2 › Chapter 3 — Cambridge › 3.6 Cook-Shops, Chop Rooms, and Coffee Rooms
