Name: Alchemilla
Item: Alchemilla
Rating: 5
Author: Harden's editor

Harden's says

Chef-patron Alex Bond previously worked at Turner's, Restaurant Sat Bains and Auberge du Lac.

Harden's survey result

2025
2024
2023
2022

Summary

Price*

£141

£££££

Food

Exceptional

Service

Very Good

Ambience

Very Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

Exceptional ratings were the norm this year in feedback on Alex Bond’s well-established foodie destination: “a beautiful, cavernous, low-lit” space occupying the Victorian brick-vaulted space that was once the coach house on the Park Estate. It’s “not cheap” of course, but provides a “brilliant night out” for which you can choose between a three-course à la carte menu at £75 per person or a seven-course tasting menu at £130 per person: “unusual flavours” but “fabulous food, and with the right level of interaction from staff”.

Summary

Price*

£131

£££££

Food

Very Good

Service

Very Good

Ambience

Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

“There is a real buzz to this serious foodie venue near central Nottingham” where an “energetic team of chefs deliver a top gastronomic experience” with a “high, Michelin-starred standard of innovation and flavour”. Occupying a converted former Victorian coach house on the Park Estate with brick-vaulted rooms: “once inside, it has a cellar-like vibe that certainly distinguishes it from other culinary destinations in the area”. Sat Bains alumnus Alex Bond focuses on a tasting menu format with five courses for £95 per person and seven courses for £120 per person: “the selection is long on interesting ingredients, and the wine pairings very diverse and excellent”.

Summary

Price*

£122

£££££

Food

Exceptional

Service

Very Good

Ambience

Very Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

“Mind-blowing experimental food and interesting wine pairings” continues the acclaim for Alex Bond’s “totally unique” five-year-old, which deserves the comparisons it sometimes attracts with that of his former employer, Sat Bains. It helps that it occupies an attractively converted former Victorian coach house on the Park Estate (just outside the city centre) with very atmospheric, brick-lined vaulted rooms. Tasting menus start at £95 for five courses, and there are also options for seven courses (£130) and 10 courses (£160 pairings). “Very friendly staff, who are very knowledgeable about the offering” complete the rosy picture painted in reports.

Summary

Price*

£122

£££££

Food

Exceptional

Service

Very Good

Ambience

Very Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

“Sat Bains's protégé has done good” – having taken over this “modish” Victorian coach house on the Park Estate (just outside the city centre) in 2017, chef Alex Bond's “wonderful natural and plant-focused eatery” rates mention alongside that of his former mentor nowadays and again receives raves for its “fabulous” food (showcased through five-, seven- or ten-course tasting menus).

For 34 years we've been curating reviews of the UK's most notable restaurant. In a typical year, diners submit over 50,000 reviews to create the most authoritative restaurant guide in the UK. Each year, the guide is re-written from scratch based on this survey (although for the 2021 edition, reviews are little changed from 2020 as no survey could run for that year).

Have you eaten at Alchemilla?

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Leaflet | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

192 Derby Road, Nottingham, NG7 1NF

Restaurant details

Dress Code No dress code

What the Newspaper Critics are saying

The Daily Telegraph

William Sitwell returned to the “ashes of abandonment that characterises the modern city of Nottingham” to discover a restaurant of “grand troglodyte glory” set in the vast red-brick cellar of an old Victorian coach house.

Famously averse to multi-course tasting menus – “my only dietary, my single unremitting intolerance” – he opted for a three-course menu, although various petits fours and “optional” courses, including chicken skin, caviar and cheese, bulked this up to 14 dishes.

He was thrilled by chef Alex Bond’s skill at “marrying natural flavours (lamb, aubergine, olives), but achieving it with such finesse that you can’t accuse him of stating the obvious”. The meal was a “mesmerising, highly enjoyable and great-value triumph of flair, confidence and professionalism”.

William Sitwell - 2025-02-02