Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

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.

Last Tuesday myself, Si and Norm headed down to the Leeds Academy to see Feeder. While both of my friends had seen them many times, this was my first time, and I can’t help feeling that it was somewhat a fall from grace to them to be now playing a relatively small venue such as the Leeds Academy.

The gig took a bit of time to get going while they insisted on playing their new stuff but from Buck Rogers onwards the crowd picked up and despite scary comments from Si on the subject, they did manage to make the rounds on all their classics.

They also played a brand new song off their upcoming album during the encore which was somewhat annoying – I can’t help feeling everyone would have been much happier if they had simply played Buck Rogers again, but of well.

On Friday, myself and Norm headed over to Manchester to see Tim Minchin at the MEN.

Tim certainly didn’t disappoint! He is currently touring with a 55 piece symphony orchestra which he uses to great affect and left us all coming away with some brand new favourite Tim Minchin songs, number one for most of us being Sam’s Mum’s Cataracts (btw, the official name of the song is Thank You God if you were wondering).

The best part of the evening though was finding out that even though Aimee had booked her tickets five months ago, and I had booked mine on Tuesday – we were closer to Tim than she was 😀 .

With Norm having a spare ticket to the Gorillaz gig at MEN last night, I decided to take him up on the offer and head over. The train journey over there was a nightmare – pretty much every train in or out of Leeds was running late and so we started off fifteen minutes late only to find we could only crawl to Pudsey.

So an hour into this journey we hadn’t even made it out of Leeds yet with the official reason for the problems being a combination of a gearbox problem and “the track being wet.” So we spent another twenty minutes or so waiting for the Blackpool train which was only a few minutes behind us apparently so turn up so it could push us into Bradford at which point they gave up on our train and cancelled it.

Once we had found another train the journey finally got going and I ended up reaching Manchester about quarter past nine – over three hours after having set off but just in time for the set – Gorillaz had just taken to the stage and were onto their third song by the time I got to my seat.

Some, who regularly go to bland and unpopular bands who can’t fill a large audience, would wonder whether they were looking at musicians or ants at stadium gigs but luckily we had no such problems – the seats themselves were really good – it was as far forward as you can get (I was in seat 3) on the left side, about half way up the lower tier.

There were a huge number of people involved in the performance. The regular act consisted of Damon Albarn, three guitarists, two drummers, four vocalists, a five piece string orchestra and two or three other people meaning just as standard there were nearly 20 people on stage, plus on top of that they had a brass band and another orchestra that did some sets and maybe 8-10 guest vocalists as well resulting in there being probably 40 people on stage at various points throughout the gig!

Despite not being that familiar with a lot of Gorillaz’ music I really enjoyed the gig, well worth the wait.

On Thursday, we headed down to Sheffield to see Paramore. The wind and the rain made for an interesting journey, but never the less we made it down in good time and after grabbing some food we headed in just to see the final few songs of B.o.B.

Paramore themselves hit the stage at around 9:15 and played an almost identical set list to the one they had played in Nottingham a few days earlier, which was great, because those were the songs I had been listening to non-stop since 😀 .

I really enjoyed the gig, probably more than Linkin Park, mainly due to us having standing tickets which was well worth the premium cost as you get so much more atmosphere on the floor – not to mention more room to get into the rhythm.

On Thursday myself and Norm headed over to Manchester to see Linkin Park at the MEN.

Turns out that the upper tier is somewhat higher than I remembered from last time I was there so booking seats up there wasn’t exactly the smartest idea. Still once you get settled in you eventually reach a point where you don’t feel like you could fall to your death at any moment which is nice.

Until recently I had forgotten how awesome Linkin Park where so having rediscovered them safely in time for the gig it was awesome to see them live. I’m not sure how well their new stuff really works in a gig setting as it’s a bit experimental a lot of the time, which works really well in the context of an album but maybe not so much in a gig.

Never the less they are still great songs though and when you add in the classics it made for a really enjoyable performance – especially when badly screaming along to every song is not only permitted but actually a good replication of the band 😉 .

I went to see the new Chris Morris film, Four Lions, on Tuesday. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a “comedy” sort of about Islamic terrorists trying to blow themselves up in London. I say comedy because it isn’t really a comedy, it’s more of a serious drama that happens to be really funny. It’s slapstick humour but set on a backdrop of something as serious as The Hamburg Cell.

It was brilliant.

A lot of people said it was really toned down before it was allowed to be released. However I didn’t feel it was particularly toned down at all (which should make the director’s cut really interesting!). That isn’t to be confused with controversial however – the film certainly was not an attack on Islam, it presented a balanced view.

It was very Chris Morris with some amazing throw away lines and easily misable humour that will no doubt provide many more laughs the second time round (think along the lines of “so much for reported crime – but crime we know nothing about is going up as well”). Well worth going to see.

Last Saturday I headed over to York to see Stewart Lee.

The opening had Simon Munnery opening for him who was in my opinion as good as Lee himself, especially when he moved onto Dawkins. “I’m writing a new book called The Salad Delusion. There’s no such thing as salad – it’s just different ingredients on a plate.”

Afterwards Stewart Lee came back to the stage for his new show, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One. Yes the criticisms are true, he did spend around twenty minutes talking about how he wished Richard “The Hamster” Hammond was dead but then again, it’s just a joke, like on the Top Gear! In any case, highly recommend for fans of Stewart Lee ;).