Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes

Confession time; I'd never heard the song Penny lane and had to google the lyrics to come up with today's title. I know! What can I say, I'm not hipster enough to listen to The Beatles or The Smiths or anyone like that now, and my parents aren't old enough to have listened to them (and passed them on to me) back then. I know all the words to pretty much every 70s and 80s song there is though! Song lyrics and blog post titles aside though, last night I visited Nottingham's newest hot spot and I thought I'd give it a quick little review. After a couple of drinks soaking up the last bit of sun possible, we headed to Penny Lane.

First of all, it's massive. I can't even remember what was there before but the actual size of the bar/restaurant seems to stretch backwards forever! Second of all, it was super busy. Like we struggled to get a table, but luckily we got a really nice one (near the window) when we did. I was expecting everything in there to be super expensive (because you're essentially paying for the instagram factor) but the cocktails were pretty standard at about £8 each (with a nice little 2-for-£10 happy hour until 9pm) and the food was actually pretty cheap. All of the cocktails sounded really nice but me and Katie both went for a 99 problems but a beach ain't one in the end, which is pink gin based and comes complete with an inflatable holder (basic white girl level 99). Food wise, the menu was a total bit of us; tapas, flatbreads, sandwiches and then a slightly random selection of main dishes. Katie got her signature; spicy chicken sandwich and chips, and I got tapas. I couldn't have picked foods that went less well together if I tried but they were all my faves so I couldn't resist; beef skewers, baked camembert and chicken tacos. As far as I'm concerned, the food and drinks get a big 10/10.

The food and drink is all well and good but the real USP for Penny Lane is the massive selection of fairground-style arcade games that they have. They have basketball, racing games, foosball, air hockey, grabber machines and a racing derby (done with camels rather than horses for some reason) and again, I was pleasantly surprised by the price. I was expecting them all to be really overpriced but each one was the equivalent of £1 (you have to buy tokens; £1 is 1 token and all the games are 1 token). I think they've done the smart thing though because I can see how you could just keep feeding tokens in for hours on end. Particularly on the racing derby in a bid to win, which, ta-da, I did! (I sat at number 4 which is my lucky number so I'm convinced that had an effect). We had such good fun trying out the various games; Katie decided to waste 30 seconds of her life in the shocker chair and then she trounced me at basketball (her score of 100 to my measly 35), but I got my own back when we played foosball; she was literally trying to stand at the narrow end of the table, didn't know how the handles worked and managed to get the ball stuck at a stand-still twice. I reckon we call it even Kate!