Turtle Bay @ Nottingham

You may be thinking WTF, this is a the kind of restaurant review that couchmagpie writes on fdndrnk.com, what’s it doing over here on his main blog? So I’ll tell you. It’s hardly an epiphany and perhaps more of a realisation that I can’t maintain the output necessary to sustain fdndrnk.com, but I just had a thought that there’s nothing really stopping me blogging about food and drink over here instead of over there. Just my need to compartmentalise. So let’s think outside the box, create a new category and just go with the flow eh? Also the fees are due for the site renewal in a couple of months and I don’t want to pay them given how many followers I haven’t got over there lol…

We went to Nottingham on Saturday and popped in to Turtle Bay which is around the corner from TK Maxx and rubs shoulders with a bunch of chains near the cinema in that part of the city. We had previously had an interesting meal at the Turtle Bay in Leicester near High Cross shopping centre and I had written a review on TripAdvisor here.

Anyway back to lunch in Nottingham. Siggy ordered a jerk chicken bun with fries (£7) and a diet coke (£3.25) and I ordered a street burger (£8.50) with sweet potato fries (£1 extra) and a banana and peanut butter smoothie (£3.60).

The decor and layout is pretty much identical to the Leicester restaurant (and probably every other Turtle Bay in the UK for all I know) with lots of bright music posters and wood, a central cocktail bar serving 2-for-1 cocktails all day and reggae on the music system. They have free wi0fi which is easily activated by inserting fake details – you know the drill.

Some of the chicken (that looked like seasoned roadkill) in Siggy’s bun wasn’t overly hot and the fries were pretty bog standard.

The pulled pork on top of my burger was tasty, but a small portion in comparison to burger joints I have been frequenting of late, and topped with a thin strip of pork crackling which was nice touch. The banana and peanut butter smoothie was thick and fully flavoured.

The Jerk BBQ sauce was nice and thick like ketchup and unlike those watery in house sauces you get in American BBQ places and lifted the burger up to a more enjoyable level of flavour. The bun was soft and sweet brioche job and the pickled red onion pieces added a little something different to the firm but moist burger. The coleslaw was pretty mild and dare I say bland. The chips were a bit greasy but had a good flavour.

Also on the table was Aunt May’s Bajan pepper sauce which is a yellow liquid of extremely spicy dimensions. I recommend it if chilli peppers are your bag. There were also three other sauces available to cater to varying levels of hot sauce addictions. I’m going to try and get me some of the Grace sauce from the world foods section of Tesco.

So there we go. My first totally food dedicated post on couchmagpie.com. That wasn’t so bad was it?

I’m going to gradually bring over my other food and drink related posts into this blog before I completely abandon it. Wish me luck…

UPDATE: Oh boy! I found the export/import function at the back end of this blog and I’ve managed to bring over all the food and drink related posts more or less intact. However there’s some fun and games with image id numbers that I’ll need to sort out. Mega lols…