University of Otago Emeritus Prof John Barsby founded the Otago Cambridge Society in 1995 and these days is its "unofficial president" and secretary.
Prof Barsby, who helped organise the Thursday night dinner, has an MA in classics from Cambridge, later returning to Cambridge as a Visiting Fellow.
About 35 people attended, including several Otago professors who are either Cambridge graduates or who have other connections with Cambridge.
Organisers said it was appropriate that Selwyn College had been chosen as the venue for the dinner, given that Cambridge University and Otago University both had Selwyn Colleges.
They were founded, respectively, in 1879 and 1893 and were both named after Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, who was the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand (1841-68), and later the Bishop of Lichfield, in England.
Cambridge was "a great university" and few universities had been going for 800 years, Prof Barsby said about the anniversary celebrations.
"I can't help but feel some sense of pride, even if my own contribution has been relatively minor," Prof Barsby said.
Emeritus Prof Hugh Mellor is a leading Cambridge University philosopher who visited the Otago University philosophy department as the de Carle Distinguished Lecturer in 2007.
He has acted in many amateur theatrical productions at Cambridge over the past 46 years and gave a talk on "Cambridge Theatre" at the dinner on Thursday.
Acting was something he had long enjoyed as "a change, a complete break" from his philosophical studies.
"You meet a very interesting range of people you would not otherwise meet," he observed.
