Pint to pint: The Lincolnshire Poacher, Nottingham Choice of seating includes a front bar, a side bar, a little book-encircled library bar and an extension-cum-conservatory at the back. Several blackboards" worth of food specials combine homely ingredients with soothing prices: carrot, ginger and chilli soup with bread doorsteps at £3.50, tomato and basil risotto at £5.95, cottage pie at £6.50, rhubarb and custard cake for £3.50. And Sunday roast for £7.50, with a free pint of beer thrown in. Hearing the list of real ales read out loud is like listening to a request on Poetry Please. It goes: Everards Tiger and Castle Rock Harvest Pale, Magpie Snowdrop and Salopian Golden Thread, Newby Wyke Bear Island and Burton Bridge Top Dog Stout. And that's just a tiny audio-taste of what's on offer. Though when it comes to actual sampling, the kindly landlady suggests doing it in four halves, rather than 14 pints. The journey begins, at her behest, with Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted (3.8% abv, brewed in Clackmannanshire), which slips down in a cheery, blond way quite at odds with its name. Next is Mauldons Eatanswill Old (4%, from Suffolk), a solid, stout-like brew, in contrast with the Burton Bridge Damson Porter (4.5%), which is smooth and ever-so-slightly sweet (that's the damsons). The final glass is full of Screech Owl (5.5%), which is created by Castle Rock, the Nottingham brewery that owns the pub, and which possesses all the qualities of the above-named bird: easy and elegant, downwards-sweeping motion, plenty of bite at the end. Outside the pub's brightly red-painted windows, the city's municipal buses trundle up and down the windblown, workaday Mansfield Road. But when you're drinking in the Lincolnshire Poacher, you're in another, and better, world. The Lincolnshire Poacher, 161-163 Mansfield Road, Nottingham, 0115 941 1584