Fat Hippo Nottingham — Restaurant in Nottingham

Tried fat hippo after seeing it on TikTok, by all accounts it looked amazing, and we couldn’t wait to try it!

As soon as we were seated, (in a booth upstairs) the waitress apologised for the state of the seating, which had a huge rip that spanned nearly the entire length of the booth.

It’s worth noting that this was the hottest day of the year so far, and to say it was hot in the fat hippo was a drastic understatement. Whilst there was working air conditioning in the downstairs area of the restaurant, upstairs was the complete opposite. It was absolutely roasting, to the point where it was unbearable.

It was bad enough for us as guests, so god only knows how hard the staff must have been finding the conditions. I don’t know the exact laws surrounding working conditions for staff, but I have no idea how the owners could continue to operate the upstairs of the restaurant with a clear conscience. There was air conditioning in place, but they drastically need to fix and address it asap!

Service was slow. Whilst we received drinks in around 10-15 minutes, we were seated for a total of 45-50 minutes before food finally arrived, which was less than ideal as we were attending a show after.

Speaking of the food, it was “OK” nothing particularly exciting, and I certainly won’t be rushing to recommend a visit to friends and family. I had the fat hippo burger, which might as well have been called “the onion ring burger” as that was mostly what was inside. There was chorizo, bacon and cheese on there too, but it was completely undetectable and overwhelmed by the 2 gigantic onion rings.

The rest of the guests in our party also commented on how tepid the food was too. Definitely wasn’t hot and I’d hazard a guess that it was more than likely left standing for a little while.

The decor particularly lets the place down, not only was everything sticky to the touch, the paint on the table we were sat at was coming off and sticking to everyone’s arms, and when we left, everyone had a white residue all over the backs of their clothes too. Utterly disgusting.

Overall, it was really disappointing. There’s lots of amazing places to eat in Nottingham, and fat hippo unfortunately isn’t one of them. The place is unbelievably run down, tatty, dirty and in need of a desperate refurb. Even right down to the toilets, they were disgusting, and I’m told the ladies even had broken lights. I dread to think what the kitchen must be like if the toilets were in such a sorry state.

It’s all well and good having a “burger of the year” accolade, but if you can’t even get the basics of running a restaurant down, should you even have a business?

Our bill came to a total of £110, we tipped £15 based on how sorry we felt for the staff.

In summary: mediocre food at best, from a dirty, tired out venue that’s clearly run on a shoestring.

Maybe...

Style over substance.

Visited the other day for a bite for lunch and upon entry was a little taken aback by the lack of customers but as it was lunch time we thought maybe we were early.

Staff greeted us and were polite but anyways we sat and ordered our food, firstly their prices are extremely high for the quality of their produce, sure burgers are expensive but when you are bringing yourself to the table when their are big names doing similar things, you have to stand out.

We ordered the tater tots, or trash browns as they call them, which sounded amazing, at nearly £7 a portion you would expect them to be, however what came to us was probably the blandest tater tots we have ever had, no seasoning, just covered in a really cheap tasting cheese sauce and onion bits which didn't really add anything at all, which was a little disheartening but we carried on

Then our burgers came and we both realised very quickly that we had been duped by the photographs we had seen, the burgers were tiny, the patties inside were no more than a half inch thick and tiny in circumference, we ordered two different burgers but they both pretty much tasted identical to eachother, just generic meat and sauce added, there was absolutely no depth to them at all, again the neat was unseasoned and gristly, the best part in honesty was the bun.

The fries on the other hand were also mega underwhelming, we ordered fries and handcut and honestly they look almost entirely the same, why nit make handcut chunky and more like a chip, if you're basically doing two different types of fries then what's the point, noticed from other reviews that people have felt like us and felt duped.

The fries/chips were also really bland and tasted of pretty much nothing, there was a very small amount of Cajun style seasoning on top but other than that they were incredibly basic, all in all our food would of cost £45 for what I feel in value is only about £20 as you could get a better burger from five guys, Wendy's or even wetherspoons in terms of value.

We mentioned to our server who then spoke with management who kindly took the burgers off our bill which is absolutely the right solution to our woes, it's such a shame as we were really excited to try this place and often look out for new burger spots.

The one thing we both felt was that the photos are nothing like what they actually sell, looks can be deceiving and unfortunately we fell for...

Found myself staying in Nottingham for two nights and stumbled across this nice place.

NIGHT ONE: "FRICKLES" (Fried Pickles) ... Game changer for me. I can normally take them or leave them (regular pickles).. but I'm glad my curiosity for the better of me as I absolutely loved these, served with a cool sour cream and a spicy Cajun sauce... Spicy, Hot, Sour, crispy batter, juicy pickle slices (think dusted in a Cajun spice mix) .. mmmmm

Ordered a main course (almost regrettably as the starter was big by my standards) which was the 'Tropic Thunder' with fries.. Again, very big, and as a burger I can't fault it, really tasty, and the candied pineapple and jerk bacon is a great combo of that 'salty-, sweet' that really compliments the slaw to bring the burger together. Possibly one negative; in that it was impossible to dislocate my jaw so I could to take a bite. Ended up using knife and fork??

BEER - House Lager was very nice... I'm not going to go into how that tastes other that it tasted of 'more'.

SERVICE: Excellent, had a lovely young lady serving who was very attentive and polite. Checked on me often, but not too much. DAY 2: Call it laziness, but I did look around at other places and menus.. but I could hear the FRICKLES call out my name from the end of the street!!

So, I returned but this time with no main. Just a starter and a side, and finished with a shake.

SIDE: Sweet potato fries with Hippo Hot Sauce and Bacon Bits.

If you're getting the FRICKLES, this is a perfect partner to it! Make sure you get the house IPA to wash it down, as you'll need it!

SHAKE: Only negative of the two nights, AVOID. "Mars Attack" didn't live up to the hype. It claims it's made with chocolate ice-cream, and it's not. Mine was above Luke warm, and tasted like Nesquick.. and not the way my mum used to make it (3 big spoons) but more like a teaspoon! Tasted like milk with chocolate essence, where you should have a deep-dark burst of chocolate somewhere (even introduce chocolate fudge sauce?) Oh, and salt.. needs a pinch of salt of you do end up fixing that shake (FYI - dessert chef..)

ATMOSPHERE: Pleasant, lighting is purposefully dark with spotlights, which works really well and fits in with decor.

I'd 100% recommend this place, and I'll be back one day for those...