Five of the best dog friendly places to eat in and around Nottingham

At the Malt Cross, we stop halfway to a table and look up. Above our dog is a Victorian music hall, its balcony curling beneath a glazed roof; a little farther along St James’s Street is the ordinary business of shopping. Nottingham is good at this sort of interruption. We go out looking for lunch with a dog and find ourselves eating in rooms built for dispensing medicines, entertaining crowds or looking after other people’s money. The buildings survive because someone has found another use for them. Whether that use produces a worthwhile lunch is a separate question.

These five places give us different answers. There are pancakes substantial enough to undermine the rest of the day’s eating, beer chosen with considerable seriousness, and an alcohol-free café whose existence answers a need that most restaurants never consider. Four are in Nottingham; the Ruddington Arms takes us south to the village and the prospect of a longer walk. In each, the dog comes into the calculation before we order. An indoor welcome matters. So does what arrives above the dog’s head.

1 The Pudding Pantry

We arrive at Trinity Square with the dog beside us and an intention to have something modest. The Pudding Pantry makes that difficult before anyone is seated. Four pancakes constitute an ordinary order here; eight, accompanied by two kinds of brownie and enough sauces to make agreement unnecessary, form a sharing platter. We gather the lead under the table and inspect the savoury page. It is a fairly transparent attempt to put breakfast back in charge.

The name suggests a cake shop that reluctantly acquired a frying pan. Anthony and Emma Quinn’s business is more interesting than that. Since opening in 2014, it has carried the habits of a pastry kitchen into things that other cafés are content to buy ready-made. Beans are cooked in-house; so are the salted caramel and marshmallows. Anthony described the latter to Nottingham magazine LeftLion arriving at the cafés in slabs for the chefs to cut with large, two-handled blades. It is a wonderfully substantial piece of work to find behind something that ends up floating on a hot chocolate.

Hot-honey chicken pancakes, £14.50, are our first choice, with a second plate of beans and cheese on toast between us. The chicken order brings four pancakes with buttermilk-fried chicken, spring onion and the chilli sweetness of hot honey. We cut down through the stack, taking pancake and chicken together. The combination belongs to the same appetite as chicken and waffles: fried savoury food, a soft batter base and something sweet binding the mouthful. Here there is no pretence that maple syrup, or its hotter relative, ought to wait until dessert. The menu warns about the heat. Anyone hoping for a gentle brunch should take the bacon, maple and blueberry pancakes instead, at £12.75.

The beans make the better argument for paying attention to the quieter end of the menu. At £8.95, they arrive on Welbeck Bakery sourdough with mature cheddar, the haricot beans cooked in a tomato sauce with a little spice. We move a piece of toast through the sauce. Making beans from scratch does not automatically make a café admirable, but it does let a kitchen decide how the tomato, seasoning and cheese relate to one another. It also gives a customer with £9 to spend access to the same kitchen as someone ordering the £16.95 Full Pantry, with its eggs, bacon, sausages and pancakes. Excess is an option here, not an admission charge.

Our drinks stay simple: coffee from Nottingham’s Outpost Coffee Roasters, without the brownie that can accompany the more elaborate milkshakes and hot chocolates. There is a respectable argument for choosing the loaded hot chocolate solely to meet that homemade marshmallow; after chicken pancakes, we lack the appetite to conduct it. The dog stays below the table while we divide the last piece of toast. A city-centre café is a more demanding place to settle than a pub garden, and this is a stop for a dog comfortable with tables and passing feet.

Ordinary brunch is largely a walk-in affair; Trinity Square does not take weekend group reservations, and afternoon tea needs advance booking. Come early if waiting outside with the dog is likely to test anyone’s patience. We leave most persuaded by the combination of cheerful extravagance and less visible kitchen work. The pancakes catch the eye. The beans explain why we take the place seriously.

27–29 Trinity Square, Nottingham NG1 4AF.

2 The Embankment

At the Embankment we put the dog beside our table in the bar and spend a little longer than necessary looking at the woodwork. Designed by architect Albert Nelson Bromley, the building opened in 1907 as a Boots pharmacy; later it became the Boots Social Club. Its Dispensary now concerns itself with beer. The conversion is satisfying partly because the old building has enough substance to withstand the joke: this is a handsome place to sit with a pint, with the river and Trent Bridge close enough to make a walk part of lunch.

The beer deserves the first decision. Twelve cask lines and ten craft keg lines give us more to consider than a brewery logo above the door. We begin with Castle Rock’s Harvest Pale on cask, 3.8 per cent, a blonde beer made with American hops and a relatively light hand. Its citrus character is useful with fried food; its strength allows lunch to remain lunch. The brewery’s house yeast is carried from one brew to the next, giving successive batches the same starting point for fermentation. We like the thought of that quieter continuity behind the changing pump clips. There is also a permanent alcohol-free guest keg, an unusually useful provision in a pub whose principal attraction is its beer.

The cod and chips, £15, put Harvest Pale in our batter as well as the glass. Across the table, the £10 macaroni cheese puts another Castle Rock beer, Elsie Mo, into the cheese sauce, adding jalapeños and crisp onion. We draw the plates closer and keep the lead beneath our chairs. These are familiar pub dishes, but the kitchen has at least considered the brewery as an ingredient. The macaroni’s chilli and onion give the cheese some opposition. It is the more economical order and a reasonable choice for someone who wants food with a couple of beers rather than a meal that occupies the whole afternoon.

Some of the menu’s more energetic ideas need a more particular appetite. The Embankment Burger VI combines two beef patties with brisket cream cheese, hot honey, pickled onion and Twiglets. That last ingredient is not a misprint. Their salty yeastiness has a plausible affinity with beef, although we are less convinced that the burger also needs brisket, cream cheese and honey. At £17.50 it is a commitment to abundance. The £13.50 smoked gammon with hot honey, a chilli-fried egg, fries and garlic greens gives the sweet-and-salty idea a clearer shape. Our fish looks a sensible decision as we return to it.

Dogs are welcome in the bar and garden, so weather need not determine whether we can eat here. The important complication is the sporting geography. The football grounds and cricket ground are nearby; before bringing a dog that dislikes crowds, check the fixtures and choose the time accordingly. We settle indoors for the woodwork and beer, leaving the garden as another option rather than a condition of entry. This is a substantial pub, but being able to accommodate a crowd is not the same thing as being the right room for every dog when the crowd arrives.

Sunday brings a separate menu, so the weekday dishes should not be the basis of a Sunday booking. Drivers must register their number plate at the bar to use the free parking. Those details settled, the Embankment gives us a particularly good arrangement after a riverside walk: an indoor place for the dog, a proper choice of beer and food that need not push the bill towards restaurant territory. We finish with the Harvest Pale, still interested in the glass after the chips have gone.

282–284 Arkwright Street, Nottingham NG2 2GR.

3 Malt Cross

Once we have finished looking up, we take the dog to a table and look at the lunch menu. The Malt Cross could probably sell a great deal of indifferent food beneath that roof. The arch of glass, the curved balcony and its intricate ironwork do much of the work of persuading us to stay. What interests us is that this spectacular room still allows an ordinary visit: a dog, something to eat, no particular occasion. The kitchen’s small plates give us a way to enjoy it without ordering a ceremonious lunch.

For our shared lunch, we choose onion and goat’s cheese tart, £7.50, and tempura baby corn at the same price, with homemade focaccia and hummus for £6. Three dishes cost £21 before drinks, a useful amount of lunch for two people intending to stop rather than spend the day eating. We share the tart and leave the bread between us. Caramelised onion and goat’s cheese are a well-established arrangement of sweetness and acidity; the pastry makes it a more substantial choice than the word “small” might suggest. The corn takes us towards a different sort of sharpness, with chilli aioli and chimichurri, the herb sauce more often found alongside grilled meat. Choosing it keeps the table from filling entirely with cheese and bread.

There are more substantial meat-free choices, including a £14.50 onion-bhaji naanwich: a homemade bhaji in naan, with mango chutney, raita, fries and salad. The menu identifies it as vegan. It is a more purposeful lunch than trying to assemble dinner from side dishes, although naan and fries together require a healthy interest in carbohydrates. For a bigger appetite, the beer-battered cod and chips or chicken schnitzel cost £17.50. We stay with the sharing plates and order coffee from Stewarts of Trent Bridge, Nottingham’s long-established roaster. A room built around entertainment can also accommodate the less theatrical pleasure of sitting still with a cup.

The music hall opened in October 1877, in time for Nottingham’s autumn Goose Fair, with a band and hot food. Edwin Hill designed it for Charles Weldon, a plumber turned entrepreneur. What saved it later was, improbably, storage: after its licence was lost and the building sold in 1914, a warehouse business left the main structure in place. Looking from our table towards the balcony, we appreciate that unglamorous interval. The room survived while other music halls disappeared. Its subsequent life has included an Italian restaurant and several attempts to restore public entertainment; today the Malt Cross works with the YMCA youth charity and supports community work alongside the pub business.

That history gives the lunch some depth without requiring us to admire every item on the menu. The £17.50 beef burger is a familiar bacon-and-cheese proposition, and the room remains a stronger reason to choose this over another burger restaurant. Our small plates make better use of being here: we can stay awhile, eat enough and leave some money for another stop. The dog lies beside us while we finish the coffee. A quiet lunch and a live-music evening make very different demands on a dog, so the events programme matters as much as the food menu when planning a visit.

There is another timing trap: on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the kitchen currently stops at 3pm even though the pub stays open later. Book separately for Sunday lunch. We gather the lead and take a last look at the balcony on our way out. For a dog owner visiting central Nottingham, this is a particularly rewarding place to stop for a light lunch: £21 in shared dishes buys us time in a room we might otherwise have passed without entering.

16 St James’s Street, Nottingham NG1 6FG.

4 Café Sobar

Inside Café Sobar with the dog, the room around us retains some of the confidence of the building society it once housed. The ceiling is high and ornamented; broad bands of colour brighten the walls above the panelling. We sit down with the lead gathered out of the way and read a drinks list that runs to ginger beer, milkshakes and affogato, the little Italian arrangement of espresso and ice cream. There is no alcohol. Here that is a reason for the café’s existence, rather than an omission to be corrected with a licence application.

Sobar grew out of a problem identified by people using Double Impact, the addiction recovery charity that runs it: returning to social life is considerably harder when so much of that life takes place around alcohol. The café provides somewhere to meet, as well as training, volunteering and employment opportunities for people in recovery. Its profits support the charity. None of this requires us to turn lunch into an act of solemnity, or to know anything about the circumstances of the people around us. We have come in with a dog because we want somewhere to sit and something worth eating. That ordinary transaction is part of the point.

The cheddar, mozzarella and kimchi toastie, £7.80, comes to our table with chipotle hash browns, £8.80. Kimchi, the fermented vegetable preparation most closely associated with Korea, gives the cheese sandwich an acidity that plain tomato struggles to supply. It is a sensible use of a powerful ingredient: mozzarella provides the stretch, cheddar the more assertive cheese flavour, and fermentation prevents the whole thing from settling into a mouthful of melted dairy. We pull apart the sourdough and share it. There is no need for an extravagant stack of ingredients when three have sufficiently different jobs.

The hash-brown dish takes familiar breakfast materials in a smokier direction, with scrambled egg, streaky bacon, fried onion and chipotle mayonnaise, seasoned with smoked chilli. We keep the sauce with the potato as we eat. It is more interesting than another large breakfast assembled by arithmetic, and costs less than the £11.50 Full English. Lunch sandwiches are served from noon until 3pm; the breakfast selection is available all day. For £2.10, soup can be added to a sandwich, making the toastie and soup a £9.90 lunch before a drink. That is useful value in the middle of the city, regardless of where the profits go.

Ginger beer, £4.20, is our drink, though coffee is a less expensive way to settle in: an Americano is £3.60 and a flat white £3.75. The range has its own appetites, from dandelion and burdock to the decidedly unrestrained prospect of putting ice cream in cream soda. The latter strikes us as sufficient occasion for a return visit. For now, we have lunch to finish and a dog beneath the table, welcome inside while we take our time over it.

The limitation is the day rather than the dog policy. Regular opening is Wednesday to Sunday, closing at 4pm, with evening events operating separately. This is a daytime café, and the food has the scale and prices of one. Bring the dog for breakfast or a sandwich, allow time to sit over a drink, and Sobar makes a sensible, inexpensive part of a day in the city. We leave particularly pleased with the kimchi toastie and with a room whose welcome has been thought about more carefully than most.

24 Friar Lane, Nottingham NG1 6DQ.

5 The Ruddington Arms

Our visit to the Ruddington Arms begins with a booking note: there will be a dog. It is a small piece of planning that makes a substantial difference to the evening, because dogs are welcome in the bar and outside, rather than throughout the restaurant. We arrive after walking at Rushcliffe Country Park, arrange ourselves at a bar table and give the dog the space beside our feet. Water and treats are available. For us, there is a menu with Colston Bassett Stilton, slow-braised beef and a distinctly encouraging early-evening offer.

This is Ruddington, south of Nottingham, so it deserves a little time of its own. The country park has more than eight kilometres of paths and a fenced dog-agility area; dogs must remain on leads around the lake, car park and play areas. We have chosen the walk before dinner, which leaves the dog with rather less to achieve once we sit down. The pub’s modern, open-plan interior and courtyard belong to a different kind of outing from the city’s crowded shopping streets. It is the place in this selection where we plan the afternoon around the dog and still give dinner proper ambition.

Red-wine-poached pear and Colston Bassett Stilton mousse start our meal, served with caramelised hazelnut dressing and ciabatta toasts. At £8.75 on the main menu, it places a cheese-course partnership at the beginning of the meal. The dairy is in Nottinghamshire’s Vale of Belvoir, where its cheesemakers still ladle the curds by hand rather than subjecting them to rougher mechanical handling. That gentleness helps produce the dense, creamy texture for which the cheese is known. Turning it into a mousse gives up the pleasure of cutting a piece straight from the cheese, but keeps the useful argument between blue cheese and sweet pear. We spread some on the toast, bringing the fruit into the same mouthful.

For the main course we choose chicken supreme with truffle mash and a sauce of wild mushrooms and leeks. It costs £18 à la carte; on the weekday early-bird menu, served from 5pm to 6.30pm, the pear starter and chicken together cost £20. Two familiar ingredients explain much of the appeal: mushroom deepens the savoury side of chicken, while leek brings sweetness without another spoonful of sugar. The mash belongs with the sauce. We draw a little of each onto the fork and accept that this is an evening for cream and potatoes. A half of Castle Rock’s Harvest Pale supplies a lighter drink alongside it.

There are more expensive ways to eat here. The £23.50 duck breast comes with confit duck-leg dauphinoise, red cabbage and orange sauce, an unusually committed use of the bird; the £22 blade of beef is braised and served with garlic mash, bacon and a red-wine bourguignon sauce. Either makes sense for a longer dinner after a longer walk. We resist expanding our order into a survey of the kitchen and take the marmalade brioche bread-and-butter pudding instead. On the early-bird menu, three courses are £26. Marmalade gives a sweet custard pudding the bitterness that makes another spoonful appealing; after our first two courses, it also seems a better finish than a cheesecake with both caramel and chocolate ganache.

The pub reopened under the Blue Fox Pub Company in October 2025, with the existing team joining the new operators. Its appeal to us rests on the rather useful provision that dogs can accompany a substantial restaurant meal while sitting in the bar. We finish the pudding with the dog still beside us, pleased that the early booking has served more than one purpose. Reserve a dog-friendly table explicitly and arrive in time for the set menu if value matters. The £26 dinner gives us a particularly persuasive reason to make an afternoon of Ruddington.

56 Wilford Road, Ruddington NG11 6EQ.