Cool places in Leicester: The Lansdowne

This image source here - all others my own

There are so many cool places to eat and drink in Leicester, and I've been meaning to start a blog series about them for ages.  First on the list is The Lansdowne, a large bar on London Road, about 8 minutes walk from the city centre and a couple of minutes from the train station.  It's a favourite with The Boy and I for numerous reasons: amazing playlists, great lagers and ciders on tap (neither of us are real ale drinkers, but I'm pretty confident they'll have decent ales too), incredible retro furnishings (including lots of sofas to chill out on), and perhaps most importantly, plentiful vegan food options.

 

They always have at least four vegan, and numerous more vegetarian, options on the main menu, plus veggie or vegan specials from time to time.  Yesterday, The Boy opted for the red pepper houmous and roasted vegetables ciabatta with potato & sweet potato wedges, which was the weekly sandwich special, while I had a Brie ciabatta.  The photograph above is minus one half of the sandwich - we'd already tucked in by the time I remembered to get my camera out!

 

There are loads of options for drinks on tap, including Aspall cider (my favourite), plus a plentiful cocktail list and fridges bursting with interesting soft drinks and fruit juices.  The food is reasonably priced considering the portions are hearty, with a sandwich costing around £6, plus a bit more if you want wedges, and main meals hovering around the £9-£10 mark.

 

Most important to me in a bar is the atmosphere and the Lansdowne always delivers, with friendly staff and great music (on Saturday's visit it went from Johnny Cash's Boy Named Sue to Fleet Foxes to the Sam Cooke soul classic You Send Me in the space of minutes).  As it's very close to the city centre and train station, but also to the university and Clarendon Park (a lovely, if gentrified, residential area to the south of the city) it tends to have a nice mixture of customers, from young families eating lunch to groups of office workers, lecturers from the uni, students, or people killing time before their trains.  One thing that can be guaranteed is that The Boy and I will be found there regularly, chowing down and enjoying a couple of pints before making our wobbly way home.