Posts Tagged ‘restaurants’

A few weeks ago, we headed to Sam’s Chop House for a meal while Kat was in Leeds. I had been there once before and had had a great experience, so I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel they really delivered. The steak was good, but not great. It also took a really long time for it to turn up and though I was hoping they could recover with desert, that proved similarly disappointing.

Afterwards we headed over to Brown’s to enjoy their fine range of cocktails.

Having left the cinema from seeing Johnny English Reborn, we decided to find somewhere to grab dinner.

It was Saturday night and a lot of restaurants would be busy – so we decided to hit Thai Edge as they always have a table free :D. Of course, I was hoping they didn’t remember me after the now infamous change incident.

Dinner was good and I almost finished my main – something which I would have considered quite an impressive feat given I had a starter as well and I’m not getting any younger.

With Blackhouse offering 40% off your food bill this month, I decided to take Elina there for lunch.

Despite being tempted by the Kobe steak given the discount, I eventually settled for a nice rump steak while Elina went for the posh surf and turf. As usual the steak was cooked to perfection, though I was a little disappointed by the rest of the experience. The steak knives didn’t cut the steak very well and sitting directly under the low hanging lights made for an uncomfortably warm dining experience. Still, always a pleasure to eat there.

For my birthday, we headed out to Cattle Grid for some steak.

There was a total of fourteen of us, making us not only the biggest group in the restaurant, but also bigger than all the other groups put together lol. I was particularly honoured by the attendance of Katie Barr, Sarann and Moz, who attended despite their vegetarian and vegan lifestyles!

As with my first visit, I went for the ribs which were excellent, but overall I was a little disappointed – the food took a long time to arrive and it didn’t arrive all at once. Jonni also had to send his steak back. Never the less, I had an enjoyable meal and finished off with their strawberry ice cream, which is delicious though suggests I didn’t order enough meat.

With Elina back in Leeds, I decided to take her out for dinner and despite my general dislike for Italian food, with Jamie’s Italian being one of the few restaurants in Leeds I haven’t eaten at, we settled on that as a venue.

You can’t book, so you just have to turn up and wait. We were told on arrival that the wait was around 20-25 minutes. We were handed a pager and sent to the bar area, which was too small for the number of people waiting, but otherwise fine.

The wait ended up being around 15 minutes and we were soon seated and ordering. The food was good, and served fast, but I felt we were generally a little rushed so they could turn over the table. Overall, it was a perfectly pleasant dining experience, but nothing special.

With Si heading down south like a coward, we recently headed over to Little Tokyo for a meal.

Having asked for a knife and fork last time and been provided with kid’s chopsticks, I decided this time it was best to take my own, just in case. Luckily I ordered the steak and that comes with a knife and fork, so problem solved :D.

Last Friday, I headed out to Tiger Tiger for dinner with Si and Sarann. We were using Sarann’s Gourmet Society card to get ourselves some discount, but on turning up we found out they didn’t actually have our booking down and neither Si or Sarann had realised the restaurant was so integrated into the bar at Tiger Tiger, making it very noisy. So we left in search of somewhere we could hold a conversation.

Sarann was still determined to score some Gourmet Society discount, but the disadvantage is that you have to book in order to get it. No problem we thought, we can just book now. But we didn’t have a list of participating restaurants so we had to go online to find that.

No problem, Si had his iPad with him. Unfortunately, he had the wifi only version, so we needed to find a wifi hotspot. We couldn’t find one in the nearest area, but then he realised he could tether his iPad to his iPhone to get internet. So we sat on a bench on The Headrow googling for Gourmet Society approved restaurants on an iPad routing its internet through an iPhone in order to save ourselves a few pounds – nothing complicated there :D.

Eventually, we settled on Thai Edge, which consistently delivers good food and as luck would have it, they were fairly quiet so we got a table straight away.

The meal was enjoyable though when the time came to pay, the bill came to £43 and not having any change, we gave them £45. This disappeared and never came back with our change. Normally we wouldn’t have minded this, but given service was already included it seemed too much of a liberty for them to assume we didn’t want our £2 back. As it happens, we did, given the effort Sarann had gone to to save £2 using her Gourmet Society card lol.

On Friday, myself, Norm and George headed back to Gattle Grid for some more steak.

Having had the ribs last time I opted to try the steak this time, though I was somewhat torn because the ribs were amazing. They are definitely the best thing on the menu, once again being bigger than the plate when Norm’s meal was delivered.

The steak was excellent, so not quite up to the standards of Blackhouse. For the price though, you can’t really go wrong.

On Norm’s (almost) actual birthday we headed down to River Plate for a good piece of steak.

Having already pre-decided, Norm went for the 1kg steak! It covered an entire dinner plate and to be honest, I think we all had our doubts as to whether it could physically be eaten by one man – never the less, Norm stepped up to the challenge and defeated it.

I decided a smaller steak would be a good call – especially as I was having half a rack of ribs to start with! Plus having only eaten what could be considered two meals in itself, I still had some room for dessert.

Overall, however, I was somewhat disappointed with River Plate. It was excellent, but it didn’t live up to my expectations given previous experiences. The judge’s verdicts are in, and Blackhouse is officially the best steak restaurant in Leeds.

On Tuesday, Atheist Society headed down to Las Iguanas for some dinner as part of their weekly social. It’s a great place to eat and best of all, they do 2 for 1 cocktails before 7:30. So by the time we sat down at our table we had to get a tray to take all the drinks over that we had lined up.

Unfortunately the food didn’t entirely agree with me and I ended up losing half a night’s sleep with stomach problems. First bad experience I’ve had there, and I eat there quite a lot. I think I’ll steer clear of the chicken next time :S.