Posts Tagged ‘leeds’

On Sunday, there was a trade union march through Leeds city centre.

While the front of the march seemed quite sensible, there point was somewhat undermined by the back of the procession with parties around Revolution just yelling obscenities through a megaphone rather than making any kind of serious political point.

Last Saturday saw the April meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub. There was no speaker this month but never the less it was a very involved meeting with an hour of news and discussion kicking things off.

Indeed, it was almost a feature length meeting given the in depth discussion we had about the future energy needs of the world and whether nuclear was a safe option or not.

Interestingly, one of the points brought up was that one of the most dangerous ways in which power can be generated is actually hydroelectricity. While it’s a very green way of generating power, a dam failure can lead to 100,000’s of people dying¹.

A few weeks ago Oli was in Leeds so we decided to hit the town for a meal. Having meaning to get myself over to Cafe Guru for quite a while I suggested it would be a great lace to grab some dinner.

We entered the restaurant just after 7pm, which being a Saturday night I expected them to be quite busy – especially as last time I had tried to get a table on a Thursday evening and had been turned down. However, we walked in to find we had the entire restaurant to ourselves.

It certainly wasn’t what I expected. In my mind I had somehow conjured up a small cosy traditional Indian restaurant, based on what I had seen on their website and that it was based at Brewery Wharf. What we actually found was a modern, possibly even futuristic style restaurant, almost entire open plan and capable of seating over a hundred people. It didn’t fit with the Indian food.

The food itself was good, though it isn’t the best Indian I’ve ever had. The spicy starter I had was rather more spicy than I had anticipated which would have been fine but unfortunately they weren’t particularly fast bringing us our drinks, which at this point I was still waiting on despite the only other people in the restaurant by this point being one other couple who had only just arrived.

The wine was horrible. And by that I mean, even worse than the high levels of tolerance you usually extend to house wine.

In the end, the restaurant simply lacked the atmosphere and character I was hoping for. The staff were friendly and the food was nice, and severed promptly (though again, you would expect so given we were the only people in there), but there was a real sense of charm distinctly lacking from the place. At least we got mints with the bill though 😉 .

Continuing our theme at Buzz of mixing and matching between high-quality restaurants and all you can eat buffets, we followed the previous work social at Red Hot World Buffet with a trip to Piazza by Antony.

They had a reasonably well-stocked bar with a range of good vodkas and knowledgeable staff too. The barmaid suggested I followed my Kettle One up with a Belvedere Intense. Given I drink Belvedere at home, I thought it was worth a shot, and turned out to be an excellent recommendation.

Unfortunately, the rest of the night was rather disappointing. I began to feel really ill after having my starter (I don’t think there was anything wrong with the food as other people had the mussels and everyone else was fine) and ended up barely touching my main and heading home straight after the meal to get some sleep.

Having finished up with the Perspective Citywide session on Zoroastrianism, we headed down to Livebait to grab some dinner.

I’m always dubious of sea food restaurants because they seem very lazy. They present you with food that it still in it’s shell and then expect you to get it out for them before you can eat it. This seems incongruent with other restaurants where it is traditional for the chefs to prepare the food for you before serving it.

I started off with the salmon which was good, but I prefer my salmon to be very well cooked and this definitely was not. The bread that came with it was very nice though.

Following this, I decided to give lobster a go. It’s not something I have ever really had a desire to eat but I do have a desire to try new things and given that I’ve never had lobster before and it didn’t seem too much more than the other mains I was looking at, it seemed worth a punt.

Overall I have to say I was disappointed. Not only was it tricky to get the meat out, but the meat itself just wasn’t that tasty. Opinions since have disagreed about the cause – Nicola suggests it is because lobster simply isn’t that nice, while Rebecca suggests I simply got bad lobster (having not been Durham educated, I’ve never had good lobster 😉 ).

The atmosphere in the restaurant was pleasurable – it’s a small place and having only sat down at 9pm, we found ourselves with the place to ourselves by the end of the meal. Service was acceptable – friendly but a little inattentive, especially given we had the place to ourselves. I wouldn’t go back in a hurry, but that is mainly down to me not being a huge fan of sea food.

For the Paganism session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Rhiannon Grant to the group. I had already seen the talk at the Atheist Society the previous Friday but it was never the less entertaining and the discussions were great.

On Thursday, it was Elina’s birthday, so to celebrate I took her out to dinner to the somewhat either arrogantly or naively titled The Restaurant on City Square.

It isn’t a restaurant that I had been to before, which in some way is part of its appeal as it is quite embarrassing having lived directly in the city centre for 18 months now when a restaurant comes up in conversation and I have to admit that I haven’t actually eaten there yet.

I turned out to be an excellent choice – it was somewhat more upmarket that I had anticipated and the staff were very friendly though it was a little noisy in comparison to the nice quiet meal I was originally aiming for.

The food was excellent too, I had the steak which I would say successfully bested the one I had had at Brooklyn Bar on my man-date with George last week, but not up to the standard of the the real Leeds powerhouses of the steak world – Blackhouse and River Plate.

The wine was great too, though I’m somewhat annoyed I’m developing a richer taste for wine because quite frankly it’s just irritating having to spend more money on good wine because you can really tell the difference (oh to be 19 again).

Recommended if you’re looking for somewhere slightly more upmarket than your standard city centre restaurant while still somewhere near the reasonably priced bracket.

On Wednesday, we welcomed Hull & East Riding Humanists secretary Tim Stephenson over to Leeds to present the Perspective Citywide session on Humanism. Tim’s talk was excellent, looking at both the philosophical side behind Humanism and also why it is important to stand up and be counted as a Humanist.

Last Sunday, myself, James and Elina headed down to Hope City Church.

Officially I think they come under the label of a “charismatic” church, which means they are hip, young and evangelical. They were founded twenty years ago by a mysterious figure that everyone refers to as Pastor Dave and has now spread to six different cities – one of which is in Africa.

Their new “Megacentre” is located in a former warehouse, which seems to be the trendy place to put a church these days and as we went in, we made or way to the brand new auditorium complete with an iMac controlled technical set-up, full band on stage and video link-up facilities so they can broadcast the news from across the Hope City Church family.

After the service, Joel very kindly sorted us out with tea and coffee (actually, I somewhat threw them when I asked if they had any cold drink) and we hung out in the “Impressions Cafe” on some very comfortable sofas. The biscuits were good but not quite up to the standard of York Rock Church which even had branded cups!

We came away with a welcome pack of goodies which included Hope City Church magazine, which was incredibly glossy and well printed, and featured a story on 20 years of Hope City Church. It was interesting to see that they had tried to start a number of satellite churches over the past two decades, some of which had worked out, others apparently hadn’t. It was interesting to see that they have become a success story – expanding into Frankfurt this November – by sheer force of will and not giving up. It may not be our cause, but it could certainly be good inspiration.

Last night we headed out to say goodbye to Craig, as well as welcoming a few new faces to the company. We started off at Cuthbert Brodrick which was crazy busy but awesome as always before heading to Red Hot World Buffet.

Even though our table wasn’t booked until 9:30, they didn’t get us sat down for over twenty minutes and then once we were sat down, they had the cheek to tell us ten minutes in that they would be closing the buffet at 11! Despite the food being excellent, this kind of service simply wasn’t on so after a quick chat with the manager we also found ourselves with a free round of drinks, which went quite a way to making up for it.

Afterward we hit Selabar followed by Smoke Stack, both great bars that I had never actually been to before and thanks to Rebecca’s contacts at Smoke Stack we managed to miss the queues and get some amazing drinks too – it’s quite nice having some Old Money in the office 😀 .