The Living Room

What a contrast with the Cock & Hoop. The Living Room is, unbelievably, a fully smoking restaurant - they don't have a non-smoking area at all. Furthermore it was full of the sort of people who don't just smoke at the end of a meal but between courses and probably during courses as well. The fug was incredibly vile.

We lasted all of five minutes before asking for our coats and headed for Bluu round the corner for what proved to be an above average, somewhat expensive, but thankfully smokefree dinner.

The Cock & Hoop

For the fifth consecutive day I drew the curtains this morning on an electric blue sky of crystalline clarity. Despite the dazzling low sun, temperatures were hovering around freezing point and our car was crusted with frost. Together with our weekend guests we fortified ourselves with tea and toast and then made our way to The Park Tennis Club for 3 sets of passionate, if inept, mixed doubles.

Braced and thoroughly warmed up we then proceeded to The Cock & Hoop for a decidedly late lunch (they serve until 9pm on a Sunday). The Cock & Hoop is a gastropub which shares its kitchen with the delectable Merchants next door (of which I hope, more later) and I was keen to make a comparison between the two. It's a warm and inviting winter venue, with a real fire (or at any rate a very realistic fire with definite flames of some sort), big comfy armchairs and a cosy, flagstoned, subterranean den amply supplied with Sunday newspapers.

I was excited to find a rump steak in bernaise sauce on the pub menu because I had eaten a stupendous version of the same thing in the restaurant for at least double the price. The restaurant version is certainly more elaborate and sophisticated but the tarragon-rich bernaise sauce was the same, authentic and delightful. I tried a forkfull of the smoked haddock, chive and parmesan risotto which was really superb, somehow light yet hearty.

To accompany my dinner I first tried a pint of draught Black Sheep Bitter from Yorkshire which was excellent but quickly switched to what I really think may have been the best ale I have ever tasted. How can I have lived in this city for so many years without encountering Nottingham Rock Bitter and the micro brewery from which it comes? They've been brewing it for 200 years as well.

As far as I can tell, the Cock & Hoop desserts appear to be exactly the same ones that you get in Merchants, but about 25% cheaper. I daresay you don't get exactly the same extent of choice as in the restaurant but you can count yourself lucky to get anything like this in a pub at all.

All in all this was easily and by far the best "pub" food I have ever eaten in Nottingham city centre. The Cock & Hoop is also a vision of a possible future to come - a non-smoking pub. What a joy! For the sensible people of Nottingham, these will be our refuge when the nightmare of 24-hour drinking is unleashed upon our city.

Disclaimer - The Cock & Hoop advertise on one of my other websites so I'm quite well disposed to them in general. I decided beforehand that if our meal was no good then I wouldn't write a review at all. Perhaps that is somewhat dishonest of me but what the hell - business is business.

Petit Paris

Petit Paris does not seem to have a website.

Petit Paris used to be called "Cafe de Paris" until the vengefully litigous establishment of that name in London put a stop to it. I don't know how they got away with it - I mean Cafe de Paris is hardly a brand is it. There must be at least one in every city (with the possible exception of Paris).

I haven't been to Petit Paris for years. Perhaps this is because my partner was waiting for them to forget about her last visit - a spectacularly debauched "girls night out" which ended with the management being obliged to carry away tables in order to create an impromptu dancefloor. I shudder to think about this. Petit Paris occupies that awkward spot midway between a top-end French restaurant and a down-to-earth Nottingham eaterie where you can do pretty much as you please.

My impression on this visit was that they have shifted somewhat towards the top end of the market. That may have had something to do with where we chose to sit. The main room was packed with long tables full of amiably drunken office parties and birthday groups. The back room is much quieter and more reserved. Well, apart from the ear-splitting explosions, shrieks and whines associated with a nearby Guy Fawkes celebration on this particular night.

There is something unaccountably odd about the accents of the senior serving staff. I would have placed them as Italian rather than French. But French is certainly spoken here - I heard a young waitress let fly in highly vernacular French after an aggrieved Canadian diner grabbed her arm as she passed.

The food was, as I say, mid-range provincial French cuisine. Nothing too fancy, nothing that would require you to bring a dictionary to the table (what is a fueillette of salmon?) but good, hearty and reliable food from people who mastered their trade and found their niche years ago. If you fancy a good, cheap night of steak frites and vin de table you won't go far wrong here.