The best restaurants to eat in Nottingham

Best restaurants in Nottingham at a glance

• Alchemilla - Special occasions
• The Cod’s Scallops - Cheap eats, child-friendly, casual dining
• Restaurant Sat Bains - Special occasions
• Kayal - Cheap eats, casual dining
• Hart’s - Casual dining, special occasions
• Delilah Fine Foods - Casual dining
• The Pudding Pantry - Child-friendly, cheap eats, casual dining
• Ibérico - Casual dining
• French Living - Casual dining
• Annie’s Burger Shack - Casual dining
• Malt Cross - Casual dining, cheap eats
• Suede Bar - Casual dining
• Yamas - Casual dining
• Kean’s Head - Cheap eats, casual dining
• Doughnotts - Cheap eats, child-friendly
• Larwood & Voce - Casual dining, child-friendly
• Junkyard - Casual dining, cheap eats

Alchemilla
Best for: special occasions

A table at Restaurant Sat Bains may be the dream booking for any foodie visiting Notts (see below), but chef Alex Bond’s Alchemilla, opened last summer, is a similarly singular experience – and more affordable, too. Even the building is special. A 19th-century garage for horse-drawn carriages, all vaulted ceilings and exposed brick, it’s an unusual and chic cocoon, now augmented with living moss walls and a large open kitchen.

A veteran of Michelin-star kitchens, Bond established his name locally at supper clubs which showcased his fondness for creating intense, compelling plant-based dishes. These are announced with typical brevity (cauliflower, roasted yeast, almond) on Alchemilla’s tasting menus and are punctuated by contemporary meat and fish courses – for instance, an outrageously savoury dish of raw beef with chimichurri – that are bold and beautiful. Alchemilla is one to watch. Menus from £95.

The Cod’s Scallops
Best for: cheap eats, child-friendly, casual dining

With its sticks of rock and lobster-pot light fittings, this Mansfield Road fish and chip restaurant may seem like fun – and it is. But its owner, chef-restaurateur John Molnar, is also a stickler for quality and sustainability. Cooked to order in beef dripping, meaty, MSC-certified cod arrives in a peerlessly crisp, unusually tasty batter and with stellar chips scattered (winningly!) in scraps. There’s also a branch in Wollaton. Fish from £8.

Restaurant Sat Bains
Best for: special occasions

The location is unpromising (beneath a flyover a good few minutes outside the city centre), but RSB is a truly world-class restaurant with rooms. The two-Michelin-star food, underpinned by a complex kitchen garden operation, has a distinctly natural style. Try the roast veal sweetbreads with broad beans, mint and shoots and the baked potato with caviar and kombu. Menus from £145.

Kayal
Best for: cheap eats, casual dining

Compared to a typical British curry, south Indian food is a revelation. Kayal is a great place to explore this sensitively spiced world of lacy dosas and fresh coconut chutneys, fragrant Keralan fish curries, and vegetable dishes of remarkable depth and nuance. Priced from £3.95, the express lunch thalis are an absolute steal. Mains from £7.

Hart’s
Best for: casual dining, special occasions

This hotel-restaurant has heavyweight provenance. Owners Tim and Stefa Hart are best known for Rutland’s Michelin-starred Hambleton Hall, while their sons, Sam and Eddie, run London’s Quo Vadis and Barrafina. Located in a Georgian avenue near Nottingham Castle, the dining room’s décor is a little dated, but its modern British dishes – for instance, grilled rump steak with heritage tomatoes – certainly deliver. Mains from £15.

Delilah Fine Foods
Best for: casual dining

This food hall (‘deli’ is insufficient to describe its breadth and quality) contains a mezzanine café, which showcases the ingredients available below. Platters, Italian salads and upmarket sandwiches are forefront at lunch, but Delilah really shines as a weekend brunch spot. Linger over French toast, avocado on toast with poached eggs, and sautéed field mushrooms on Welbeck sourdough toast with Manchego cheese and a fried egg. Breakfast mains from £5.50.

The Pudding Pantry
Best for: child-friendly, cheap eats, casual dining

It does top-notch savoury pancakes and brunches, but this coffee shop and diner, complete with vintage ice cream cart, is known for its deft baking and desserts. Do not miss the salted caramel brownie or Misissippi mud pie. At afternoon tea (from £22.95 per person for adults), the choices include a kids’ menu with homemade biscuits and milkshakes.

Ibérico
Best for: casual dining

The Moorish-styled Ibérico has broadened its scope in recent years. Its high-quality cured meats and modern interpretations of Andalusian tapas are now served alongside global small plates, such as chicken wings with yuzu sweet chilli. Sister restaurant Bar Ibérico is similarly creative but stays close to the Iberian peninsula, with dishes such as gambas a la plancha and pork belly with chorizo and morcilla. Plates from £2.

French Living
Best for: casual dining

In France, every provincial town has its timeless bistro, and so does Nottingham. Opened by Corsican Stephane Luiggi in 1994, French Living is a bright space full of Gallic bric-a-brac, with an interesting deli section of unpasteurised cheeses and organic wines. Regulars swear by its escargots, moules, steak frites and Saint Jacques scallops, which can be snapped up for a snip on its set lunch and pre-theatre menus. Mains from £18.95.

Annie’s Burger Shack
Best for: casual dining

This big, family-friendly joint may perturb burger purists. Where the modern burger is often about streamlined, meaty minimalism, US-born Anmarie Spaziano tops her New England burgers with some pretty crazy ingredients: grilled pineapple, peanut butter and raspberry jam, or Scottish square sausage. GF’s go-to is the simple German (sauerkraut, American mustard and currywurst sausage), washed down with a tipple from the Shack’s excellent selection of real ales and craft beers. Burger meals from £11.90.

Malt Cross
Best for: casual dining, cheap eats

Originally a Victorian music hall, and retaining much of its period detail, this extraordinary building is now a café bar, arts centre and independent business hub. It’s run by a coalition of church charities, but the well-stocked bar will allay any fears of piety. The well-executed food menu runs from burgers, wings and loaded fries to traditional pub dishes such as a club sandwiches and steak and chips. Meals from £11.

Suede Bar
Best for: casual dining

In Nottingham, the argument rages long and hard about who makes the city’s best pizza. For GF, the Neapolitan-style Suede – gloriously sweet and fresh tomato sauce, thin and digestible sourdough bases – just edges it over Oscar & Rosie’s American-inspired pies with their brasher, jazzier toppings (8 Stoney Street). Why not settle this to your own satisfaction and try both? From £9.

Yamas
Best for: casual dining

The name translates as “cheers!”, which sums up the breezy atmosphere at this modish Greek restaurant. It’s an informal affair of sharing meze, generous portions and big, freshly cooked flavours. Try the soutzoukakia (pork and beef meatballs) and the stifado (cinnamon-spiced tomato and beef stew). At £8.95 for three meze, lunch here is excellent value. Three tapas/ mezze dishes for £11.95pp.

Kean’s Head
Best for: cheap eats, casual dining

Nottingham’s Castle Rock brewery embraced the craft beer revolution with unusual zeal – no more so than at Kean’s Head, the brewery’s simple, single-roomed pub with a glittering array of hoppy gems behind the bar. It also does a sound line in gutsy, rib-sticking beer food, such as crispy halloumi, Hartland pork pies and homemade sausage rolls. Mains from £10.99.

Doughnotts
Best for: cheap eats, child-friendly

Do you see what they’ve done there? Hidden in a cute basement off Nottingham’s main shopping drag, this takeaway and café dispenses elaborately-topped, handmade doughnuts – light, moist, clear in their flavours – that will convert any doughnut doubter. Creations such as the toffee-filled Billionaire (topped with shortbread and caramel) or Old Skool (caramel fudge icing, shortbread, toffee and white chocolate) will please big and little kids alike.

Larwood & Voce
Best for: casual dining, child-friendly

Like its outlying sister venues, the Wollaton and the Lord Nelson, this West Bridgford gastropub – which abuts Trent Bridge cricket ground – has a formidable rep for its Sunday roasts. Local meats are the foundation for a menu that takes in roast rib of beef with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings, or pork belly with roasties, clapshot, buttered greens and apple sauce. If you’re celebrating, the kitchen can roast a whole suckling pig for eight to 10 people if given 48 hours’ notice. Sunday lunch mains from £14.

Junkyard
Best for: casual dining, cheap eats

Nottingham’s pre-eminent craft beer bar (its taps will thrill even the geekiest hop-head), Junkyard also serves perky street food. Beef cheek and mojo marinade tacos and bao buns, perhaps filled with gochujang pork belly, green chilli relish and candied cashews, are newer additions to a menu of burgers, dogs and IPA mac ‘n’ cheese balls. Note: Junkyard still serves its legendary Cuban sandwich of ham, roast pork, salami and Emmental. Burgers from £8.50.

5 foodie places to try

Brew Cavern

A tiny, magical bottle shop, stacked with hoppy wonders including beers from local rising stars Black Iris.

Small Food Bakery

Local foodies rave about Small Food’s exceptional, super-slow fermented breads. Open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Hockley Arts Club

Hidden down an alley off Carlton Street, this cool three-storey venue has all your late-night cocktail needs covered.

Outpost Coffee

Painstakingly sourced, small-batch roasted, single-origin beans power Outpost’s superlative pour-over, cold brew coffees. It serves a knockout flat white, too.

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