As you walk along Carrington Street over the canal and past the excellent Picnic Basket if you look right along the waterway you will see a couple of canal boats moored up outside the back entrance of the Canal house bar and resturant.

Then as you walk around onto to Canal Street and into the pub you cross over the inner canal boat mooring on your way to the bar. Quite an unusual feature. I have never found out if anyone actually lives in or uses these boats, they would be very handy for the pub anyway!

I have already been into the Canalhouse bar and resturant recently while checking out some of the pubs in the area particularly those in the various real ales guides to Nottingham. It does serve an excellent selection of beers, in particular those from the local Castle Rock Brewery which is just a long stones throw away from here across on the South side of the canal. I wasn’t here today for beer (athough I did drink some) I was here for some food.

In the heart of Robin Hood country one should expect to be able to get their hands on some venison. I was very happy to be able to do that in the Canalhouse even if it was in burger form between two bits of bread. I was checking out their chalkboard offerings and saw that they had a Venison burger, described as a “home made burger in a soft white bun served with sweet potato fries, side salad and red onion marmalade” for £7.95. I wasn’t that sure about the sweet potato fries but the burger sounded OK.

The really sweet red onion marmalade went well with the rich venison meat of the burger. I was really enjoying the burger part of the dish. At first I quite liked the fries they looked good, were quite crisp but yet they were soft inside, in fact they were almost a little creamy. The only thing I struggled with was that as the meal progressed each bite of sweet chip and burger got sweeter and sweeter so that it was almost like eating a dessert instead of a savoury main. That was where I felt that to my tastebuds the sweet potato fries were not such a good idea to combine with the sweetness of the onion marmalade. I thought that It really only needed one of the two. Shame really as on their own they were both good. There was also a really well balanced leaf salad to go with the dish and to be honest, I think it works well and perhaps better just with the burger and salad. Now I have put that out there I can hear a chorus of salad dodgers shouting “No! we need our chips!”. I know it ‘sounds’ like I was a bit down on the meal, but I am not it is a really good burger! I would eat the burger on its own again.

There are plenty of other options on the menu as well that you could have, I almost had the “Pork and Chilli sausages on a bed of wholegrain mustard mash, smothered in rich gravy” also for £7.95 but as I said that Venison Burger had caught my eye. I won’t list any more options I will let you go in and check them out for yourself, and while you are at it, I suggest that you have an ‘accidental’ beer or two.

The Canal house is at 48-52 Canal Street and is is easy walk from the Station Street Tram Stop (which is closest), you could also walk back from the Old Market Square stop quite easily as well. They are also on Facebook and Twitter