Fitzbillies is a 100-year-old cake shop, café and bakery in the centre of the historic city of Cambridge. Although that makes us quite old by the standards of most businesses, a century is actually pretty young around here – some of the colleges date back 800 years. Though we’re one of the youngest institutions in this beautiful place, we like to think we’re firmly at its heart.
The bakery was founded by a couple of local boys on their return from the First World War. Back then, before the appearance of fast food and ready meals, if students didn’t want to eat in the full formality of a college dining room, there were only small local independent shops to serve them. Perhaps some hot soup or stew from the pub, or a cold pie or slice of ham from the butcher. Mainly, though, there was ‘tea and cake’, served to students by the likes of The Whim, the Copper Kettle and, most famous and beloved of all, Fitzbillies.
Fitzbillies was not a ‘patisserie’ with fussy, aspirational confections; it didn’t do ‘Viennoiserie’, rich with butter and accompanied by coffee. It offered a uniquely British kind of baking. Simple, familiar... not a million miles away from what mother might have cooked at home and loved equally by children, adults, working men and women, undergraduates, dons, divines and aristocrats. This kind of cake shop was a vital part of every small town, feeding everyone the treats they loved.
Our illustrious alumni
Of course, as part of the Cambridge story, Fitzbillies is also a destination for tourists and every year we serve thousands of people from all over the world. It’s a strange thought. The café is pretty, but not as gorgeous as the old college buildings; it’s old, but not as old as the institutions around it. Maybe, like us, our guests just want to sit, eat cake and absorb the unique atmosphere of the place.
Sometimes we see an advert on the television featuring a celebrity endorsement. You know the kind of thing – a footballer tells everybody how good a particular kind of crisp is – and so we started listing the people who’ve loved our cakes. The people who conquered Everest, discovered DNA and the proton, wrote brief histories of time, the inventors of webcams, microcomputers and atom bombs, creators of radio telescopes and members of supergroups, actors, archbishops... the occasional spy... and Stephen Fry.
To be honest, the list is so long and so brilliant that we can’t even begin to write it down. We’ve lost count of the many sparkling and influential people who have sat on our rickety chairs. So many essays and theses have been finished on our tables. Sure, there are glossier, more fashionable and modern bakeries, but we’re quietly confident that more of our customers have been Nobel Prize winners than any other bakery in the world.
Proud though we are of our history, it’s not the best part. Sitting in the café, we watch thousands of stories unfold. A builder walks in to buy sausage rolls for lunch and falls into conversation with the guy from the tech startup who’s also buying them for his team lunch. There are a couple of oarsmen from the Cambridge Blue Boat sitting in the coffee shop, which always flusters the baristas. There’s an elderly couple who’ve come in every Wednesday since they retired. There are always young couples studying together, flirting or breaking up, and old couples popping by to reminisce about when they did exactly the same thing. During interview weeks, we see nervous young applicants brought in by their far more nervous parents. Over the next three years the lucky ones will be back dozens more times, sometimes with books, a new boyfriend or their tutor for an informal supervision, and, if all goes well, the whole family will be back in on Graduation Day. Many return to college to get married and we’re proud to make their wedding cakes. Perhaps the best thing is when people who’ve spent particularly happy times here bring in their babies or children and it feels like all of this will go on and on forever. It may sound strange, but to us, and our regulars, we’re a ‘neighbourhood café’ even if it’s for a particularly special little neighbourhood, a sort of ‘family favourite’, even when that family is now dispersed all over the globe.
This is the tradition that Fitzbillies has continued, unbroken to the present day. Simple British baking in an entirely democratic environment, serving sticky buns and sausage rolls to dustmen and dons alike. Since the last Lyons Tea Shop shut its doors, we’ve been amongst the few surviving carriers of that torch – making people happy with tea, cake and hospitality.
This book will take you into the unique world of Fitzbillies. The work of the bakers, their recipes and techniques, alongside our history and the story of how we turned the business around. We’ll hear the stories of some of our amazing customers, tales from our special corner of authentic British baking and you’ll learn how you too can make people happy with tea and cake.