Lucky Nottingham we’ve been graced with the presence of Hickory’s Smokehouse and before I even saw it was open myself I’d heard lots about it. We tried for weeks to get booked in and finally got in on a Wednesday evening – the first slot available! This isn’t a sponsored or a gifted experience we headed down ourselves as we love barbecue food and just had to try it.

Firstly, we were really pleasantly surprised by the amazing service, everyone was really friendly and attentive and it felt really different to restaurants that we’d been to around the same time.

They had a great drinks selection and unfortunately we were too full to try the amazing desserts but we were able to fit in a starter. We shared the Classic Corn Dogs which we thought were a good price at £6.99. The menu description is – ‘Three sausages dipped & fried in a cornmeal batter, served with South Carolina barbecue sauce, a sprinkling of crispy shallots & bacon bits.’ They were really tasty, didn’t taste overly fried and we really enjoyed them.

For our main courses I ordered The Bird & Beast Burger which was priced at £14.25. The menu again describes this giant burger as… ‘Why choose between beef & chicken when you can have both? Southern fried chicken, prime beef patty, hash brown, lettuce, tomato, American style cheese & tangy creole mayo, all served within a toasted bun.’ It was so, so nice. I’ve had burgers like this before which have been too much, too dry or tasted really oily but this was really nice, the meats were all perfectly cooked and not dry at all and the hash brown was a great addition.

Luke went for the Texas Style Brisket which was £15.50. ‘There’s no messing around with our grain-fed beef brisket. Cooked low ‘n’ slow for 16 hours, each brisket is served warm rather than piping hot (just like they do in Texas) with house slaw, skin-on fries, pickles & Tennessee bourbon gravy.’

We both had the ‘magic dust’ on our fries which is a bit like the Peri salt in Nando’s – that’s the only way I can describe it! But, it was a little too dusty and was a little dry and overpowering, I think I would have liked half the am0unt or a mix of both plain fries and dusty fries! The barbecue sauce was fab too but the only thing I wasn’t keen on, but Luke loved, was the coleslaw – but this was just personal taste. Overall we loved Hickory’s, we thought it was good value for money and would love to go back soon but I need to make room for dessert because their FroCo (frozen custard!) sounded incredible.