Review : Encounters Restaurant, Nottingham
Posted: August 12, 2011 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: dinner, eating local, eating out, food, local, local food, Nottingham, restaurant, review 1 Comment »Last weekend, I went on a scavenger hunt around Nottingham City Centre (a fun activity which had been organised by the Hickling WI). It was great to learn about some of the finer details of Nottingham’s architecture that you don’t usually appreciate while you’re busy rushing from place to place.
As part of the walk, we also got a two-course meal at Encounters restaurant on Mansfield Road. I’ve walked past this place literally hundreds if not thousands of times since I moved to Nottingham in 2003, and often wondered about it, so I was excited to get a chance to go inside and try their food!
The fixed lunch menu had 4 choices for the main course -including lamb with a redcurrent sauce, chicken with mustard sauce, salmon with hollandaise (I can’t remember the fourth one!). I went for the chicken and although there were no vegetarian options on the menu, the staff were happy to whip up a vegetarian alternative for Emma.
As well as our meals, we were delivered a platter of vegetables and cauliflower cheese and a very generous basket of lovely homemade rolls too. The bread rolls included plain and varieties like olive rolls (which weren’t my favourite) and red onion rolls (which were amazing!) and it was lovely to have homemade bread in a restaurant when so many places bring out slightly lacklustre shop-bought bread.
The chicken in mustard sauce was very nice, and my other dining companions enjoyed their choices too! I wouldn’t say it completely blew my mind but was nice and so were the vegetables we got with it.
For dessert, I enjoyed a slice of lemon cake with a large pot of tea (the tea cost £1.50). I was a little worried when I saw the large glass case containing all the desserts – to me those things always scream ‘we aren’t fresh and have been sitting here for 3 weeks!’. But contrary to my expectations, the lemon cake was nice, sweet and zesty. Certainly not as nice as a freshly made cake but good nonetheless.
Overall, Encounters is great value for money especially on its value pre-theatre and lunch options. You can check out Encounters website here, but for details of special
Review : Carluccios Nottingham
Posted: August 6, 2011 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: Carluccio's, eating out, food, italian, italian food, Nottingham, pasta, restaurant 2 Comments »
Last week I went with my workmates for a lovely dinner at Carluccio’s in Nottingham and wanted to tell you guys all about it!
Yes I’m afraid this is going to be yet another review where I say that something is FANTASTIC! I really should review some awful things just so you can see that I don’t always think things are great. For example, Peyton and Byrne. But I don’t want to choose things that I KNOW are bad if you see what I mean…
Anyhoo….
All the Carluccio’s restaurants (of which there are about 45 – lots of which are in London, but now there are also branches in Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham and even a few across the middle east!) are decorated in a lovely light and airy, very casual style. Its a very informal feeling place to eat, almost like a giant cafeteria, which I personally love.
You can check out the Carluccio’s menu here – I went with the Menu Fisso (fixed price menu) both because it had the chicken dish that I love, and because I’m cheap. The fixed price menu is £9.50 for 2 courses or £12.50 for three – awesome value!
Sadly I was far too busy eating and talking to remember to snap any pictures of my food, so I grabbed some pictures of Carluccio meals from the tinterwebs.
I had chargrilled garlic bread for my starter which I had mistook for their amazing foccacia bread. If I went back (and had the fixed price menu again) I would go for the bruschetta which seemed nicer. For my main course, I had milanese di pollo which is a flattened chick fillet covered in the most amazingly crunchy panko breadcrumbs and fried (picture above). You also get a side salad with the dish, and I ordered some rosemary potatoes to go with it too, which were absolutely delicious but it must be said, had no hint of rosemary at all!
Carluccio’s do lots of other great pasta and meat dishes but I am a creature of habit and I LOVE the milanese di pollo – if you go, make sure you try it!
I couldn’t resist dessert given that a tiramisu (my fave) would cost just £2 in the fixed price menu.
Here’s what it looked like -
It was really lovely – classic tiramisu just like Carluccio’s nonna presumably used to make where all the flavours had time to gel and come together – perfect!
Overall, I MUCH preferred Carluccio’s to the much more expensive Jamie’s Italian which I visited earlier in the year, both in terms of the food (and the price of the food!) and the atmosphere/style of the restaurant itself.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what my meal cost -
- Fixed price menu (3 courses) – £12.50
- Lemonade – £2 (I don’t drink wine)
- Rosemary potatoes – £3
- Total £20 including tip
So in summary, I thought Carluccio’s was great value and a really nice place to eat and would certainly recommend it! They also have a take-away deli where you can get their homemade breads, ready meals and lots more stuff.
Has anyone else tried the new Carluccio’s in Nottingham – what did you think?
Review : Lee Rosys
Posted: July 15, 2011 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: cake, cheesecake shop, eating out, homemade, Lee Rosy's, Nottingham, places to eat out in Nottingham, Tea, tea tasting 1 Comment »Last week, I went to a lovely tea tasting evening at Lee Rosy’s in Nottingham. It was very informative and opened my eyes to all the many varieties of tea out there! Jasmine tea (the worlds most expensive tea!) was particularly interesting to taste. Although I really enjoyed the tea tasting – I’m afraid I don’t think there’s any danger of me becoming a tea connoisseur any time soon – I still can’t tell the difference between tesco value tea bags and any others so I don’t think there’s much hope for me!
In case you’ve never been, Lee Rosy’s is located on Broad Street, opposite the Broadway Cinema. Its an independent cafe that specialises in the teas of the world and it has a very chilled out shabby-chic atmosphere inside.
As well as their great selection of teas, Lee Rosy’s also serve loads of other drinks too – I had a delicious chocolate milkshake which was £2.40. Yum! They had other milkshakes too such as caramel and strawberries and cream and I’ll hopefully be back to try more!
The only negative point about Lee Rosy’s for me was their cakes – they appear to all be bought in (not homemade – gasp!) and none of them looked particularly appetising to me – you know how you can just tell when a cake is homemade, tender-crumbed, unique and delicious. These were not. They buy in their cakes from The Cheesecake shop – take a look at their carrot cake – its alarming grey and carrot-free looking!
But our £5 for the tea tasting included a piece of cake, so I got a piece of the chocolate rocky road/chocolate fudge cake anyway to take away (mine didn’t look anything like the picture and didn’t have any strawberries or marshmallows on).
It was okay – a bit stale, – certainly not homemade and it just wasn’t delicious enough for me to spend 450 calories (or however many!) eating all of it so it went in the bin. Overall, the lack of homemade cakes is the one negative point about Lee Rosy’s.
Things seem to be better with the savoury food though – although I didn’t eat while I was there (apart from my takeaway cake), I noticed that they do great value savoury options such as soup and pittas with prices starting around the £2.50 mark which is great for a fuss free light lunch or snack. There are lots of options for veggies and vegans too which is fab!
As well as tea and food, Lee Rosy’s also host events such as a film night, and knitting club and they also sometimes have small, intimate gigs there which I’m sure would be fantastic – Click here to see upcoming events at Lee Rosy’s on their website!
What do you think of Lee Rosy’s? Has anyone tried their selection of savoury food? What do other people think of the cheesecake shop also? I’ve had their cheesecakes and now their cakes and been very very disappointed by both- am I just a really harsh critic?! Let me know!
Petit Paris restaurant review
Posted: June 30, 2011 Filed under: Reviews, Uncategorized | Tags: eating out, eating out in Nottingham, food, french cuisine, french food, Nottingham food and drink, Petit Paris Leave a comment »Earlier this week, Lee and I ate at Petit Paris in celebration of his 29th birthday! I thought I’d share with you a review of what Petit Paris is like, what the food is like, and how much it costs!
Petit Paris is a fantastic value, genuinely french restaurant (most of the staff are french!) that seems to be doing really well despite the recession which I expect is down to their great offers.
When we visited on a tuesday lunchtime, we were the only non-OAPs in the joint, and you know those guys are a tough crowd who like a bargain!
The lunch offer is two courses for £9.95 (or three for £12.95) and you can also trade up to a slightly better meal by paying a small supplement. They also do evening and pre-theatre menu’s which are slightly more expensive -£10.95 or £13.95. And unlike many places that might offer good value food to get you through the door, you can also get decent wine with your meal without paying through the nose.
For my starter, I had a crispy brie parcel with tomato chutney and salad – it was very nice! I probably should have gone for cream of butter bean soup given my love of butter beans, but the cheesy goodness was hard to pass up!
Lee had a chicken and bacon salad with various veggies – he loves this salad!
For my main course, I had a roasted red pepper stuffed with various veggies (ratatouille style) and topped with mozerella. I don’t normally like pesto but it tasted good in this context. I did leave all of the rocket though as I can’t stand the stuff and I would have preferred the pepper to have some more interesting stuff in it like maybe some cous sous or breadcrumbs, but it was very nice and very healthy as it was!
Lee had the minute steak with a massive pile of frites. I swear Petit Paris get their chips from McDonalds as they taste almost the same – but much better than McDonalds chips! Yum.
Here’s me enjoying my main course
And Lee enjoying his birthday!
So in total we spent £19.90 for our food, plus about £10 on wine and soft drinks – and had a very pleasant experience! Another thing to say is that Petit Paris is a small, kind of higgeldy-piggeldy, intimate restaurant and its a nice place to spend a couple of hours.
Here’s a summary of the good and bad points of Petit Paris as I saw them – you can check out more reviews here
Good points
- Good value
- Delicious food, daily specials too
- Staff very friendly and good atmosphere
- Free bread! But….
Bad Less good points
- Not sure if its as good on value as a 2 for 1 at say Strada but you are supporting a genuine local restaurant rather than a chain
- The free bread comes with butter that is hard. as. a. rock. Petit Paris, if you’re reading this – stop storing your butter in the fridge!!
Where do you like to eat out around Nottingham? Do you prioritise value offers and 2 for 1s? Has anyone ever used a groupon/living social restaurant voucher before?
Like this:
Review – The Golden Fleece Pub
Posted: June 24, 2011 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: burger review, eating out, food review, good food in nottingham, The Golden Fleece 5 Comments »I’m always looking for places in Nottingham that do good value, great tasting food & the Golden Fleece is one of my favourites.
They have an extensive menu featuring lots of hearty pies, sandwiches and burgers AND loads of great daily specials including stuff like homemade soups, seafood and other delicious sounding stuff.
But I am a creature of habit and every time I go I get the veggie burger with chips and a diet coke. The burger is £5.95 so the whole meal comes to about £8 – great value for such a yum and filling meal! You won’t need to eat again for a while!
The veggie burger is moist and delicious and almost tastes like real meat – to veggies anyway if not meat eaters! It comes in a giant toasted bun (the bun must always be toasted!) slathered in plenty of mayo with crispy fresh chips. I always get mine with cheddar cheese which is about an extra 80p but well worth it!
In conclusion, please stop what you’re doing and make it your mission to eat one of these as soon as possible!
As well as the super – amazing burgers, The Golden Fleece also does a lovely sunday roast every sunday! The atmosphere is relaxed and casual and the decor and surroundings are kind of shabby chic – its a nice place to hang out and the staff are very nice too.
I’ve got more places that are on my list to review in the future -
- Edins Cafe
- Jam Cafe
- The Larder on Goosegate
- Alley Cafe
Whats your favourite place to go for tasty food that doesn’t cost the earth? Any recommendations?
Healthy eats in Nottingham!
Posted: June 9, 2011 Filed under: Healthy Eating, Reviews | Tags: eating out, eating out in Nottingham, healthy eating, healthy food in Nottingham, Nottingham, The Malt Cross Nottingham 1 Comment »I always struggle with making healthy food choices when I eat out, for a few reasons
- Eating out is normally a ‘treat’ – I’m spending my hard earned pennies on a meal – I don’t realllly want to spend them on a salad
- I feel compelled to eat everything on my plate because I’ve paid for it (and restaurant portions are often pretty ginormous). Can we start a campaign to make ‘doggy bags’ more of a thing in the UK? Wasting food isn’t cool and neither is overeating!
I tend to eat out before the City WI meetings with my lovely friend Emma (there’s no time to go home before the meeting) but last night we made a healthier choice – roasted tomato and basil soup instead of (our previous favourite) the amazing veggie burger with chips at the Golden Fleece (on Mansfield road).
I would recommend the Golden Fleece veggie burger until the cows come home (I’m having one next week as a treat for my birthday!) but I realise they should probably be just that – treats.
So as a yummy alternative to ‘faster’ food, I heartily recommend the Malt Cross who have a daily soup of the day for only £3.70 (amazing value) that hit the spot and was pretty healthy! Probably would have been better if I hadn’t scarfed ALL of the bread (as you can see, there was a lot of bread!) but one thing at a time! They also do amazing veggie burgers and other great meals but having affordable, tasty healthy options on the menu is really nice.
The Malt Cross is on St. James Street just off the market square so really handy if you’re in town!
