Nicholson's!

Nicholson's is a restaurant in the centre of Nottingham that is attached to the Hilton hotel. I've walked past it hundreds of times but I'd never noticed this place before until my parents came to visit and suggested that this was where we would eat. It looks nothing really from the outside but when you go in it's very swish and posh looking, nice. Happy hour is from five until six so me and my mum took advantage of this by having two glasses of wine and if you order that then they give you the rest of the bottle for free, perfect! The menu was very concise, with having one dish from what I'd say every category on there, so there was a fish dish, a meat dish, something with pork, something veggie, etc. This was good in some ways, so you weren't over whelmed, but a few more options would have been nice because, especially with the mains, as I didn't really fancy much of what was on the menu.

For starter I had salmon fishcakes, which I feel is a dish that you can tell how good the place is depending on how good the fishcakes are. As a huge fishcake lover I was very impressed with these. They were on the mini side, but I think that that is a good for a starter as it didn't leave me full as I went into my main course. The inside of the fishcake was nice and hot, temperature wise, the potato was lovely and soft and the taste of the salmon was beautiful. The fishcakes came with a sweet chilli sauce which I wasn't too keen on, but then again I don't really like sauces like that. It was watery, which is what chilli sauces are meant to be like, and had a kick to it which was rather nice. Overall, loved this dish and it would have been even better with a tartare sauce!

For my main I had a piece of fillet steak with chips, coleslaw and a corn on the cob. However, this dish did come with some controversy. I asked for it rare, expecting it to come more on the medium side, but when I say it was well done, it was 30 seconds shy of burnt. When it eventually came back and given a second chance it was a much different story. The cow was still mooing and that's just how I like it. It was a lovely piece of steak and when it was cooked right it was lovely, especially with the oil on top, I don't know what was in the oil but it was very tasty. The chips were triple cooked and were absolute perfection. Crispy on the outside yet fluffy on the inside, everything a great chip should be. I'm not normally one for sweetcorn or coleslaw but I had a little try and OMG I think I've been converted. The sweetcorn was very, well, sweet and there was something about the coleslaw that brought the whole dish together and it meant that it didn't need a sauce, as I'm normally a peppercorn sauce kinda gal.

For dessert, because the other two courses just weren't enough, I went for the classic chocolate fondant. All of the desserts came in this cute little jar thing and the fondant had cream on the bottom and was then topped with ice cream. Although it did look good, it made it awkward to get the cream out and also that bit of the cake went ice cold as apposed to the nice warm cake that was on top and still dry. The cake was moist and soft but I couldn't tell if the middle was gooey because it was in the jar and everything kind of melted into one. It was super tasty though and a bit too rich as I couldn't finish it. The little spoon was full of skittles which was a nice little edition too!