For less than £8 we had two meals and two pints – and while it wouldn't win any prizes for quality, this is precisely the kind of cut-price deal which will prove irresistible in these straitened times.

* Click here to sign up to free email news and sport alerts from Woodhouse Today.

It's a deal which plays directly to the Royal Park's target market.
This cavernous alehouse is in Position A for the student market, surrounded by the tight-knit buy-to-let terraced streets of Hyde Park.

* Click here for latest news in Woodhouse, Hyde Park and Burley.

And, judging by two visits this week, its charms are being enjoyed both by students and the resident locals.

It has been three years or so since I was last in – a memorable night when Leeds beat Preston in the play-off semi finals to qualify for that fateful game with Watford in Cardiff.

And it was on that visit that the landlady told me the Royal Park was the biggest pub in the city, and had been so even when the gargantuan and oft mis-spelled Fforde Grene was still going strong.

It looks big enough from the outside, an imposing building which dominates the junction between Queen's Road and Royal Park Road. And from the main front entrance you emerge beside a long bar at the end of an open-plan room which is dominated by big-screen televisions, games machines and comfy leather seating. Flock wallpaper too, if that's your thing.

A doorway to the left side of the bar leads to the quieter L-shaped Wedgwood Lounge, while there is a more intimate snug to the right.

But the pub is on three levels with a pool room upstairs and a slightly grungy venue for a live bands in the basement – and if that wasn't enough there's a broad courtyard to the rear with plenty of space for outdoor drinking and smoking. You could quite easily get lost in this place.

Unusually for a pub in the heart of studentland, the Royal Park serves a good choice of real ales, with Caledonian Deuchars, Charles Wells Bombardier and Timothy Taylor Landlord all available on draught when I called in this week. I might take issue with how well they're kept – the Deuchars was all right, but the Landlord seemed well below par on two consecutive nights, which was something of a disappointment.

But there's a good choice of lagers as you would expect, and the Royal Park is currently midway through a six-week cider festival.

Once the preserve of cash-strapped teenagers and Morris dancers, cider seems to now have regained some cachet, a renaissance which is partly down to the assured marketing clout of Magners, the emergence of some interesting niche brands and the earth-shattering discovery that it tastes good over ice.

The Royal Park Ciderfest runs until July 5 and features some interesting alternatives including Magners Pear, Brothers Strawberry and Kopparberg Mixed Fruits.

But for all its size, its Sky Sports, its beers and its wall-to-wall pool tables, the most remarkable feature of the Royal Park has to be the menu, which offers cracking value by the basketload.

Now you might well have thought that basket meals had been consigned to the same backwater of our social history as the Aztec bar, the bubble perm and the Electric Light Orchestra – but they're back with a vengeance at the Royal Park, and at £2.99 a throw, the prices bear some comparison to those of the 1970s, when that flock wallpaper was all the rage too. Even better, it's £4 for two, so I splashed out on a couple for myself and an unsuspecting female companion who had been labouring under the misapprehension she was going somewhere posh for her night out.

I can't pretend there was much quality involved. Mine was a few battered chunks of chicken, a heap of chips and a spicy dip; hers a slab of beefburger topped with some melted cheese, and more chips. But it was tasty and filling and doubtless a decent re-fuelling stop for students eking out the last of their loan before the summer break.
British

If they're feeling more flush, the menu includes a "Best of British"
section with choices like sausage, egg and bubble and squeak (£3.99) or liver and bacon with mash and peas (£4.75), and though there are some more expensive choices, even a hearty mixed grill is only £7.45.

The value continues outside where the barbecue menu boasts half pound lamb or steak burgers at £2.50, and £3.50 for a whopping one pound burger.

One minor mystery though. The barbecue menu is offering something called a Wiltshire Scream. I have no idea what this, but I'm sure someone will explain...