Posts Tagged ‘restaurants’

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 😉 .

We recently headed down to Distrikt for Sunday lunch.

It is located just across the road from my apartment which is convenient though it is a bit of dive inside. It’s nicely done out, but it is underground and that comes with inherent implications as well as it being like a sauna.

The bar itself had an excellent range of drinks including several flavours of Belvedere and 42 Below which are some of my favourite vodkas. The food itself was very nice. They do their beef really rare, which I don’t mind, but put some people off a little.

The bar staff were a little surly at first but I think they had just been having a hard time as their kitchen wasn’t working for the first thirty minutes. Things lightened up however, after she heard my ring tone however and discussed whether you would peg me as a Rhianna fan or not 😀 .

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 decided to stage a curry night to discuss some of the pressing issues for Leed Skeptics I set about trying to find us a nice restaurant to enjoy said curry. I eventually settled on Cafe Guru – but they were full so we went to Chaophraya instead.

Luckily, they didn’t disappoint either. The service was excellent and the restaurant was well fitted out. It was however very easy and the place itself was quite cramped with the amount of tables they were fitting into the size space. In reality though, it’s hard to fault a place with does a Thai curry sauce, in a Yorkshire pudding, on a steak.

James gave the place a similar thumbs up though having later spoken to Gijsbert about it, he said that he had a good experience the first time but since then it has been poor – maybe we need a second visit to get a more well rounded view, which definitely sounds like an excuse to go back.

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.

While wandering around, trying to find an open pub at 11am on the Saturday morning we found a place which described itself as the “home of beef”. We decided this was something we really couldn’t ignore and so headed back there in the evening to check it out and grab some dinner.

The food was good but not great – it was very reasonably priced given that it was 400g of steak which was very well cooked but nothing compared to the great steaks I have had in Leeds. So worth checking out but no replacement for a proper steakhouse.

Following on from Andrew Copson’s talk on the Wednesday of Reason Week, we headed to Sam’s Chop House for dinner.

I was initially a little sceptical, especially given they didn’t book my salmon (on purpose, I presume), but once we tucked into the steaks, it turned out to be an excellent choice. Not quite up to the standard of the steak powerhouses in Leeds, but I would say it easily topped Brooklyn and The Restaurant. The sides were excellent as well as was the desert which featured no less than three different types of chocolate-based baked product.

It was reasonably pricey, but no more so than The Restaurant, and I would definitely return there given the quality of good – and hopefully next time I go they won’t have run out of chops. Rather a big omission given the name of the restaurant!

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.

Having not really done much with my Saturday other than try and get some work done, I decided to ask George out on a romantic man-date (which also would have involved Norm, but he hadn’t been paid yet).

We ended up at the recently opened Brooklyn Bar at the bottom of Call Lane, as they had a restaurant upstairs which looked good. The bar was well stocked as well – anywhere which stocks 42 Below and Belvedere gets a big thumbs up in my book.

The steak was very nice, but not amazing. It was reasonably well cooked and good quality meat, but can’t stand up to the amazing flavours of Blackhouse or River Plate. Never the less, I wouldn’t have any hesitation in eating there again.

On Saturday I indulged my final act of hedonism before ending the Christmas amnesty on Campaign for a Debt Free Chris by heading to Browns for a meal with Kieran, Si and Sarann.

The food was good, myself and Si both opting for the Browns Bacon Cheese Burger which rose to the class the of the restaurant very well. The company was equally good too as we whiled away the hours reminiscing about back in day. Good times.