A couple of years ago I went on a horrific date to The Grosvenor pub on Mansfield Road. It wasn’t just the guy that was awful, the pub was dark, dingy, dirty and unpleasant.

I had heard that it had been through a huge refurbishment, and you can’t really miss it as you’re driving up and down the road. But it took me a while to actually go in. I’m actually quite glad I did.

  
It’s been a lovely sunny day today, and my friend got there first and bagged the window seat. The place is totally different to what I remember it being, it’s light airy, super clean and has an amazing sounding food menu.

  
My eyes were bigger than my belly as usual, so I ordered by starter and a main. We were told there was about a half an hour wait on food, so I ordered both to come together.

  
To start with I chose the chipotle pork tacos, which were two small flour tortillas topped with honey and chipotle pulled pork, tangy salsa, soured cream, red chillies and spring onion. There was also a small lime wedge. Thankfully the red chilies were cut into big slices, so I could discard them easily, I am not a huge fan of chilli. There was also way too much soured cream for my taste, so I managed to scrape the majority of that off too. They were fantastic size for a starter, although I couldn’t taste any honey, and the chipotle sauce was a little bit bland. Very aesthetically pleasing though.

  
For main I ordered the pork belly, which I had served with seasonal veg, sweet potato fries, and gravy. When it came I was incredibly disappointed. The belly pork had no crackling, which I believe is a must. Not just that but it had absolutely no colour, and looked incredibly anaemic. There wasn’t really any flavour to it, although the texture was nice when I didn’t have a mouth full of fat. The sweet potato fries were cooked beautifully, hot and crisp, but as the belly pork was placed on top of them, the ones that were touching the had already turned moist. The gravy was delicious, really thick and rich. I’d have preferred not to have the belly pork at all to be honest.

  
Another thing to note, I went with two vegans and a veggie. Although the menu seems to cater slightly towards vegetarians there was literally nothing that my vegan friends could eat. 

They ended up eating bowls of chips and the crunchy vegetable dippers from the children’s menu. The dippers where carrot, cucumber and red and yellow peppers, accompanied with a dip. You could choose between soured cream or barbecue sauce. The BBQ was decent. 

My veggie friend had the butternut squash Wellington, which was puff pastry filled with butternut squash, feta, carrots, walnuts and red pepper chutney. It was served with roasted new potatoes and a side salad. The portion was tiny. He said it was pleasant, but didn’t fill him up in the slightest. 

There were some other really nice sounding bits and pieces on the menu, such as crispy breaded squid, pulled pork nachos and moules frites in a shellfish bisque sauce, but I don’t think I would go back to eat again. Maybe it was an off day, but I think it’s just the standard menu. The children’s menu sounded good, with things like the pulled pork topped burger which you can’t get on the main menu. I would probably have preferred that to be honest. If you’re not particularly fussed about having any taste to your food then go. But if like me you love food, I wouldn’t recommend it. It does have a lovely beer garden which is great in the sunshine and a definite winner for me if you want to drink, but for food it really isn’t for me.
The staff were also pretty lax in their serving style. We ordered three rounds of drinks in total, but the table still wasn’t cleared of glasses until we were finishing our final drink. As we were there for about three hours, and the place wasn’t busy, they could’ve done something else other than standing around chatting amongst themselves.