Lord Roberts, Nottingham

For many years this has been of our regular lunch stops on my annual visits to Nottingham. There has been little change over the years, but when I visited last week I discovered that it had become the second pub run by the Flipside Brewery, based at Colwick, Nottingham. There were four Flipside ales on - Copper Penny (£3 a pint - 4.2%), Flipping Best (4.6%), Clippings IPA (6.5%); and Russian Rouble, a 7.3% dark stout of course. I had pints of both the Copper Penny and Flipping Best, which were both excellent. A little chalkboard on the counter announced that you could try before you buy, and generously sized tasters of the other two ales were gratefully sampled. We were told by the barman that this is the second Flipside pub, and that at some stage they are likely to follow the example of the other one and offer a CAMRA discount But perhaps more importantly, they plan to increase the total handpumps to ten, with five Flipside ales available, plus another five from regional breweries. The only downside at the moment is that there is no hot food (not even chips), and that sandwiches are limited to cheese or ham. Hopefully they will up their game on the food front. But this looks like becoming a Nottingham destination pub.