Celebrating Cambridge’s 75th city status: a local dining guide, and the Indian restaurant in Cambridge to book

Cambridge got city status in 1951. So 2026 is the 75th year of it. The council marked the date with a free party on Jesus Green on 12 July, one o’clock until eight, headlined by a DJ set from Paul Chuckle, which is a sentence I did not expect to write this year.

Anyway, a 75th is not an afternoon. It runs all year. And the only way to celebrate a city that I have ever found convincing is to eat across it, street by street, until you have a rough map in your head. That map, for a lot of people here, ends up passing through Prana. Ten years on Mill Road will do that. It is the Indian restaurant in Cambridge everyone eventually gets round to.

Seventy five years, and what changed at the dinner table

In 1951 Cambridge got its charter. Cambridge City Council started the commemorations properly in April, when the Mayor hosted an event at the Guildhall and put out the historic royal charters, freshly restored by local conservator Edward Cheese. Those documents are the paper trail of the whole thing. Everything since has been the city arguing with itself about what a city actually is.

Food is a decent way to track it. The Cambridge of 1951 was not a place you went for dinner. Colleges fed themselves, the pubs did what pubs did, and the idea of walking twenty minutes across town because a particular kitchen had something you wanted was not really the point of the place. Seventy five years on, the map looks nothing like that. Mill Road alone runs Turkish, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Portuguese and half a dozen more within a stretch you can walk in ten minutes, and the grocers on that road stock things the 1951 city had never heard of.

That is the interesting bit of the anniversary. City status was a formality granted by royal charter. What made Cambridge a city in any way you would notice was people turning up and opening kitchens. Ask around for a top Indian restaurant in Cambridge in 1951 and you would have been met with a blank look. Ask now and you get an argument, which is the healthier answer.

The anniversary year, and what is left of it

The Jesus Green party has been and gone, but 2026 has plenty of runway. If you are building a food led weekend around the celebrations, work back from these:

• Cambridge Folk Festival at Cherry Hinton Hall, running into the first weekend of August. One of the longest running folk festivals anywhere, and the city council organises it.
• Out of the Ordinary, 29 and 30 August. Street performance and giant puppets through the city centre, free.
• Screens in the City in August. Cambridge BID’s free open air cinema, four days, two locations.
• Music in the Parks, which rolls on through the summer with free afternoon concerts in the city’s recreation grounds.
• Mill Road itself. No ticket, no programme, no stage. Walk the length of it, count the countries you pass, then stop somewhere for dinner. That is the anniversary in miniature, and it costs nothing until you sit down.

Every one of those needs a dinner afterwards. That is not a coincidence, that is just how days out work. And the anniversary crowd is a booking crowd, so the good tables on a Saturday in August will go early. Any Indian restaurant in Cambridge worth the trip will be full by seven on those weekends.

Where Prana fits in the picture

Kobir Ahmed opened Prana at 97 Mill Road in 2016. He still runs the kitchen, still fusses over sourcing, and prepares some of the sauces and pastes himself rather than buying them in. It is the sort of detail that sounds like marketing until you taste two versions of the same dish side by side and one of them has a base you can actually pull apart in your head.

The cooking is Bengali rooted and contemporary rather than a museum piece. Sikandari lamb gets forty eight hours in the marinade before it goes in to roast. There is a Goan fish curry and a chilli sea bass that regulars get slightly territorial about. Awards have followed at the British Curry Awards and the Prestige Awards, plus a Best Dining Experience win at the Lux Life Hospitality Awards, though awards are a lagging indicator of anything.

The room seats up to a hundred, which is more useful than it sounds in an anniversary year full of group bookings and relatives who have decided to visit. Most of the time you want an Indian restaurant in Cambridge that can seat your lot without a three week lead time, and there are fewer of those than you would think. Vegetarian, vegan and halal are all covered properly, so a table of ten with four different requirements is a booking rather than a negotiation. If you are chasing the best Indian in Cambridge and you want somewhere that can handle a real occasion without turning stiff, this is the top Indian restaurant in Cambridge for it. It is a short walk from Parker’s Piece and five minutes from the station, so nobody has to plan a route.

Building the meal

Do not order defensively. This is a menu with range, and an anniversary is a reasonable excuse to use it.

• Start wide. The mixed platters cover both camps, one with grilled duck, gunpowder prawns and chicken tikka, the other stacked with sabzi pancake, samosa, pakora and paneer.
• Take the vegetarian section seriously. The vegetarian Indian dishes in Cambridge you get here are cooked with the same attention as the meat, not left as a courtesy.
• Order the Sikandari lamb. Someone at the table should.
• Get a biryani for the middle of the table and a couple of vegetable sides to go round it.
• Naan. Garlic, peshwari, both. Reviewers keep singling them out and they are right to.
• Mango lassi if it is warm out, which in late August it usually is.

One more thing on the vegetarian question. The vegetarian Indian dishes in Cambridge that get remembered tend to be the ones where the kitchen has bothered with the base, and a good Indian restaurant in Cambridge will show you that in the paneer and the dal long before it shows you in a tasting menu.

Book it, and walk it

If you do one thing with the 75th anniversary, make it this. Pick a Saturday, do the anniversary programme in the afternoon, and finish on Mill Road in the evening. It is the version of Cambridge that the 1951 charter could not have predicted and would probably have approved of.

Prana takes bookings direct and through the usual platforms, and it runs takeaway and delivery across the city if you would rather eat the anniversary at home in your slippers. People argue endlessly about the best Indian in Cambridge, which is half the fun of living here, but very few of the arguments leave Prana off the list. Seventy five years is a long run for any city. This particular Indian restaurant in Cambridge has been part of it for ten of them, which is not bad going for a corner plot on Mill Road.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Q1: Which Indian restaurant in Cambridge should we book during the 75th anniversary year? A: Prana on Mill Road is the one we would put first, and not only because it is five minutes from the station. Awards, a serious kitchen, and a room that can genuinely take a group of fifteen without buckling.

Q2: When did Cambridge become a city? A: 1951, by royal charter. 2026 is the 75th anniversary, and Cambridge City Council has been marking it across the year, starting with a mayoral event at the Guildhall in April and a free party on Jesus Green on 12 July.

Q3: Is Prana suitable for large groups? A: Yes. It seats up to a hundred and takes private events, birthdays and corporate bookings.

Q4: Where is Prana and how do I get there? A: 97 Mill Road, CB1 2AW. Five minutes on foot from Cambridge station, walkable from the centre, and the Citi 1, Citi 3, Citi 7 and U buses all stop nearby.

Q5: Does Prana cater for vegans and halal diners? A: Both, alongside a full vegetarian range. Worth flagging anything specific when you book so the kitchen can plan.