Harley's Lounge, Nottingham

Alex Conway left this review about Harley's Lounge

Harley's lounge is a micro pub located in the front section of the much larger Gurka Kitchen restaurant. The whole building was originally a single joint pub called The Poachers Taven.
Harleys is located at the front of the building in what looks to me like what would have been a function rook or lounge off the main former pub building.
Inside the pub consists of one long hard floored along shaped room with tiled floor and a spattering of tables. The decoration is quite plane and open plan and not very cosy as you would come to expect from micro pub. In all honesty its more of a small/medium sized pub/bar room with little in common with the micro pub ethos.
Interestingly the much larger Gurka Kitchen side retains almost all of the original pub features which is nice to see, it literally could be opened as a pub again overnight with all changes purely cosmetic and the foundations of the pub still very much unchanged.
This side of Nottingham is a pub desert and aside form the Pelican there are no other drinking establishments left in the entire Bilborough estate these days.
The reason for the visit was a double header dinner reservation at the adjoining Gurka Kitchen restaurant which you can access via the pub, but both also have their own separate main entrances and share one communal central toilet. Both the pub and curry house are standalone separate businesses but there is a joint agreement that both drinks from the pub and food from the restaurant can be ordered and enjoyed in each other’s business which in theory sounds like a good option.
The bar featured standard keg plus neck oil and six handpumps of which three were clipped from local breweries Castle Rock (Elsie Mo £4.20) and Blue Monkey x2 (Jungle VIP and BG Sips) all of which were sadly variations of mid strength hoppy pale ales.
My welcome was on the cold side from the biker barman who was functional at best but served me with an air of suspicion and the clientele did seem a bit clickey. I really don’t think this place gets many outside visitors. The fact all other customers were on Stella and Neck Oil should have warned me but the Elsie Mo was absolutely vile! Cloudy, stale, sour, just bloody horrendous.
With just 15 minutes to kill before my dining party arrived, I decided not to complain (just didn’t get he vibe it would be received well/actioned to any good compromise) and just cut my losses, left half the beer and went and sat in the restaurant with a Cobra.

What could have been a very good fusion concept turned out to be a proper dud! I will not be venturing out to this neck of the woods again for this venue and aside from keen tickers would advise others to do the same.
For anyone interested the Curry was… average. Nice old school pub decor with exposed beans and the original bar still in use but there are dozens of better curry options in Nottingham.

On 13^th October 2026 - rating: 3
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