Welcome to The Nottingham Food Blog
This is a place where I try to give a flavour of the many places in this lovely City of Nottingham and surrounding County, that I have eaten a meal and partaken of a beer at. If you are a regular reader I thank you for your continued support, over the last few years it has been very rewarding to see so many people visiting the site and I hope that you have found somewhere new to eat, I know that I have, and it has been a lot of fun for me, so I hope it has been for you too! If you are a new reader or looking at this site for the first time, well I hope that you find something to tickle your taste buds and perhaps somewhere to take a bite.
What to eat?
I have found so many great bites of food, and I am almost too afraid to list them in case I leave one out; If I want Fish and Chips well then I have to head to The Cods Scallops. For a more ethnic treat you cannot go far wrong than visiting the New Art Exchange over near the Hyson Green Tram Stop. In the Villages try The Black Cat Café in Ruddington, The Humble Cat in Radcliffe on Trent or the Village Café and Bistro in Keyworth (see the cartoon below), for Pizza you have to visit Olly at Oscars
For bacon and sausage, there are many great Farm Shops such as at Gonalston, and Farmers markets in West Bridgford, Sutton Bonington, and in the Old Market Square. My current favourite butchers to visit are Allwood and Sons in New Ollerton, please try the Mangalista Sausage, I am in love with the smoked bacon at G.H. Porters in Newark, and of course I have never been let down by the excellent sausages by Johnny Pusztai in Sherwood at JT Beedhams.
Where to get a decent pint?
If I had to pick just one pub and one pint to drink for all time, then I would have to select the Vat and Fiddle on Queensbridge Road and the excellent Harvest Pale Ale. I love the offerings from the Castle Rock Brewery and if you are looking to sample some rather good beer then I recommend that you go straight to the source and the pub attached to the brewery is a good place to start. Other pubs serving the Castle Rock beers that we frequent on a regular basis are the Canalhouse and the Newshouse on Canal Street, The Keans Head up in the Lace Market, and the Lincolnshire Poacher up on Mansfield Road.
If you want to try a few different beers from the local breweries then you can easily work a walking route out but if you haven’t the time and you fancy a little old fashioned pub crawl then perhaps this may assist?
Fancy a Pub Crawl?
On occasion we have been known to head out on a pub crawl or two and one of our favourite routes starts at The Vat and Fiddle and heads up past the Castle. This route also takes in quite a few decent places to eat as well. I will be publishing a few of these routes this year as it seems fair to share.
The beer is often aided by some great meals as well (some of which made it onto the blog)
The Roundhouse in Nottingham – Excellent Food and Beer
The Crafty Crow – Real Ale and Craft Beer and Local Food
The Castle Pub – Good Beer and ‘Takeaway Fish and Chips’ Indoors
This is my Friday Heaven – Fothergill’s Fish Pie washed down with a bottle of Goose Island 312
Trip to Jerusalem – Testing the burgers with an out of town American
The Navigation Burger Bar – An easy recommedation – Eat Here
How does this Food Hunting work then?
Lets look at a typical day in the MyFoodHunt world
Sometime it is not just a cartoon world, although it can feel like we are participants in an unlikely story
One famed occasion led to a right dogs dinner and when you see the picture of the meal you will know what I am talking about!
This all happened on a trip to Lincoln the full story is here “How a day trip to Lincoln ends up with a right Dog’s Dinner of meal!”
What do I write about?
There is a lot that never makes it onto the blog and some that makes it onto other blogs. I don’t really do reviews and don’t provide ‘scores on the doors’, lets leave that for the ‘yelpers’, posters on TripAdvisor, and the such. I am just here to tell you what I liked and what I didn’t like about places I have been to in this great City and the Towns and Villages around it in the County.
Most of the time if I don’t like somewhere at all it never makes it onto the blog. I try to find the good or at least something positive in all the places I eat at and still work on that principle that if you having nothing nice to say then say nothing at all.
I know that for many of the chefs, cooks, and suppliers that I visit that this is their dream, their life, and the thing that they get up in the morning for.
I am a great admirer of them all, whatever level they have reached in their chosen profession it is worth pondering that without them you may just be sitting at a generic table in a generic food chain outlet looking dismally at some sort of generic sandwich wishing for something better and dreaming of a decent bite of food.
This blog is just one part of my life, a big part to be honest, but when I am not munching my way through Nottinghamshire I can be found either cooking at home or travelling far and wide on a MyFoodHunt quest of some sort
What is My Food Hunt?
In some ways My Food Hunt is just what it says. It is the story of my travels looking for and consuming food, some of it good, some of it not so good.
I started blogging in Chicago and spent just over a year riding on the Chicago Elevated Rail way between different stops looking for different places to eat. That blog evolved into “The Chicago El Stop Food Hunt Project”. I had planned to and still hope to travel to every one of the 144 Stations and find somewhere to eat nearby.
At the moment MyFoodHunt is focused on a daily basis in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. I use the Nottingham Tram system and Bus Networks to search for food (and beer), but I also like to travel through the county searching for Farm shops and artisan suppliers.
I set up “The Nottingham Food Blog” as a means to write a personal journal to document this journey and also give me another excuse to eat food and blog that.
In the first month there were two readers and I suspect one was my Mum. Six years later so many of you are checking the story out on a regular basis, I kind of hope that means you have found something you like. I am still amazed that anyone is interested but If that means that you find just one nice meal or decent pint of beer, well that make me happy!
All of the different blog outlets that I have are linked together through the MyFoodHunt.com website. Each blog links into that site.
In many ways although I called it My Food Hunt, it is not just mine, everyone has their own food hunt and it would be good to hear about your own “My Food Hunts’ as well.
My Favourite quote that I found about food is from the ‘Hairy Bikers’
“Food is the commonest of all currencies, the most universal of languages, and the more we’ve travelled, the more we’ve become aware of it’s importance. It’s what gets us going in the morning, and what sends us to bed happy at night”
That is certainly what drives me to eat and to write
I hope that you enjoy my journey and I hope that you enjoy yours too
Cheers
Marcus @myfoodhunt
