James and I love to eat out, we don’t get to do it very often so when we do go out we don’t mind spending a bit more money than we would if we went out every week. When we heard that Alchemilla had opened in Nottingham we made sure to book it in for one of our date nights. To start I will say that the restaurant is unlike any other restaurant we have been to, the first thing you see walking into the restaurant is all of the chefs busy at work in the kitchen. The restaurant is all open brick with gorgeous ferns growing on the walls. You’d imagine it to be quite dark but the huge skylights really make it feel light and airy.
The menu we choose was the 10 course menu on a Saturday evening in May. This menu was £65 each and we also had wine pairings costing £55 each. We also had a glass of Prosecco each which cost £8 per glass. So our bill for the evening came to a total of £256. Was it worth it? Well make sure you read on to find out…
While we waited for our ten courses to start we chose to have a glass of prosecco each and were brought some lovely bread and two amuse-bouches as a treat from the chef. Which were both absolutely delicious and made us very excited for our menu to begin 🙂
- Amuse-bouche
- Amuse-bouche
The winning dish of the night for me was the first course… duck liver, enoki, fermented garlic (below) – it was one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted in my life! It seriously was like angels dancing on my tongue!
Duck liver, enoki, fermented garlic – Heavenly!
The real let down for me was the main which was… short born sirloin (LDF), caramelised cauliflower, yeast (below) – I literally could not eat this (James ate it for me). The waitress did offer to bring the duck main course instead but I declined as I had just had three poor course in a row so just wanted to move on to the desserts by that time.
Short born sirloin (LDF), caramelised cauliflower, yeast – A real let down.
The other courses were a mixed bag, some really delicious and some just not so delicious. I photographed all but one course, I’m not sure what happened there but it was the pork jowl course, the flavours of that dish were lovely but my pork jowl was just fat so the texture was awful. This was passed over to James who said it was not as good as his piece so I was a bit unlucky there.
- duck liver, enoki, fermented garlic
- crab caeser
- BBQ celeriac, sunflower seed, quinoa, pine
- onion, wakame, peppercorn sauce
- potato terrine, smoked eel, oyster
- rhubarb, tarragon, liquorice
- chocolate, miso, banana, lime
- lemon meringue pie
As you can see from the photo below we take our eating very seriously 😉 We gave each course a score out of ten. My scores are in yellow and James’ are in red. You can probably see that he enjoyed it a little bit more than I did.
My total score out of 100 was 57 and James was 79. James even scored one of the dishes 10/10, while I only scored it 8 I have to agree that the rhubarb, tarragon, liquorice was absolutely gorgeous!
The service through out the evening was fantastic, our waitress was very helpful and could not have been friendlier. Our wine waitress was incredibly knowledgeable and served us the perfect wines. We would highly recommend the wine pairings if you do go to Alchemilla, the wine complemented the food so well and really made all of the flavours burst.
We aren’t in that much of a rush to go back to Alchemilla but we will never say never. If we do go back I think I personally would opt for the seven course menu as there was just too much for me to really enjoy everything. Have you been to Alchemilla? We’d love to hear about your experience so please leave us a comment and tell us all about it 🙂
* This review is completely honest and all the food was paid for 100% by ourselves. We have had no contact with Alchemilla restaurant other than to eat there as paying customers, we just wanted to share our experience with you all.
What gorgeous dishes, I don’t think I’ve ever had duck liver before so would love to try that!
I love all the exposed brick work, it looks really pretty.