Nikki's, N1

Be careful when negotiating the revolving door entrance to avoid a Bernie Ecclestone moment! This bar looks like a conversion, but they’ve gone to a bit of trouble to make it look nice. The main bar area as you are propelled through the revolving door has attractive parquet flooring and is furnished with a bit of banquette seating, but is mainly furnished with scrubbed wooden tables and hard wooden chairs. The ceiling’s painted an arresting combination of crimson and gold; the walls are green; and unusual and frankly bizarre prints adorn the walls. There are also a few models of things above the bar back, such as ships, barrels, penguins, etc. Oddly, it didn’t look overly over the top to me. There’s another room at the back past the bar counter; this one is carpeted and is furnished similarly to the main bar area, but has some fancy iron grillwork surrounding one of the tables. I didn’t see any TVs (but one might have been lurking somewhere), nor any fruit machines as I guess they would be considered too tawdry for this sort of upmarket place. Rather unsurprisingly, it’s not cheap in here. There were a couple of ales on – Darkstar APA and ELB Jamboree. The Jamboree was a really nice drop of beer, but at £2.30 a half I thought a tad expensive. This is the sort of place where sliders appear on the menu – 3 for £8. Main course are around the £10 – in fact the “Angus beef and pulled pork cheeseburger” is £10. It’s better than some other places in the area that I’ve visited, and is OK as long as the inflated ale prices don’t put you off.