Posts Tagged ‘food’

Recently, I bought a fish from the market. Like a whole fish. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to do any Finnish fish, so I had to settle for a Norwegian one instead. It was alright, I decided it was too mean to tease Viki in the end, so I just settled for cooking and eating it.

Last week I decided to buy a crab. There was a disappointing amount of meat inside, but it was fun to prepare.

While mentioning I had just written up a negative review of Trio recently, Norm suggested that I was too negative and just hated everything. As such, I wanted to write a short piece recommending a few of my favourite restaurants in Leeds, to point out a few places that I would highly recommend eating.

Blackhouse, one of the best steak restaurants in Leeds, nice atmosphere if a little noisy, but that is mainly due to the live pianist they normally put on. The steaks are fantastic.

River Plate, another fantastic steak restaurant, this one Argintinan. A bit on the pricey side, but arguably the best steak you will get in Leeds.

Chaophraya, despite mixed reviews from some of my friends, I have to recommend Chaophraya as the best Thai restaurant in town. I’ve always enjoyed amazing food and good service there.

Sam’s Chop House, if you’re ever in the mood for a bit of traditional English, if such a thing actually existed, you can’t go wrong with this place.

Cattle Grid, another great steak restaurant, perhaps not quite Blackhouse or River Plate, but what it only slightly lacks in quality, it definitely makes up for in portion size. Try the ribs, they’re amazing.

Las Iguanas, two for one cocktails and fantastic Latin tapas make for an excellent combination, and according to our waiter at their South Bank branch, Leeds is the best one in the country – staff even get sent up here to train.

Also, honourable mentions to The Restaurant, which despite it’s steep prices and odd name, win lots of points for greeting me with “good evening, sir” as well as having great food, and Oranaise, which I wouldn’t describe as the best Moroccan restaurant in Leeds, but is certainly the friendliest.

Last week, I took Elina for a romantic night’s food shopping. Came back from Marko with 16 steaks, 30 bottles of Kopparberg and a box of chocolate bars. Job done :D.

With Viki pretending to be ill to avoid paying for breakfast, like the cheap Mackem she is, and keeping George firmly under her thumb while at it, it fell to Norm to fire up the grill for this month’s post-Wendy fry up. He didn’t disappoint.

Work having shat all over my Friday night plans where I was supposed to be delivering a session of the Answers course at Atheist Society and then spending some time with Elina, I eventually made it home around 9pm, still in need of grabbing some dinner.

So, having rescheduled Elina to tomorrow, myself and George headed out to grab some much needed food. While I had heard some mixed reviews since the last time I went, they consistently delivered again with some amazing food. My Weeping Tiger actually tasted more of beef than tiger, but then I’ve never actually had tiger, so maybe it tastes the same.

Last Sunday, we headed down to Distrikt for some Sunday lunch.

Rich always gets great service in there as it turns out he has been unknowingly masquerading as an Observer food critic. You have to wonder whether an Observer food critic would actually walk in with a copy of the Observer, but there you go.

Never the less he played up to the roll and recommended the lamb to us, which he said was excellent when he had had it last week 😉 . The dessert was good too though they clearly haven’t taken on our heartfelt suggestions from last time that they needed more chocolate based options.

With the anniversary of Arthur Fonzarelli having arrived once again, I organised a birthday meal at Piccolino. As it happened Fonze turned up late to his own birthday shin dig so we ended up eating the main course without him, but never the less we didn’t let his tardiness spoil our fun.

The restaurant was a reasonably up market place and this was evident from the pitiful amount of change I received back from my £10 note having ordered myself and Elina a drink.

The staff were friendly though it was sometimes a little hard to get their attention. Some of them didn’t seem to speak very good English which I always find a good sign in restaurants as it can often be because they’re actually from the country that the restaurant’s food style is based on, though of course equally it could be a placebo effect.

The food was nice, the portions were small but I didn’t come away from the meal still feeling hungry so no concerns there. I had the crispy duck for main which wasn’t actually that crispy but the sauce was excellent and duck is a fantastic meat in general. Piccolino’s real strength seems to be in it’s desserts however.

I enjoyed the meal, but given the above average bill which didn’t translate into above average food, I think I would pick one of the multitude of great restaurants in the city centre rather than heading back there any time soon.

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 😀 .

Having a post-Wendy fry up for a second month in a row, definitely makes it a long standing tradition. Even Fonze stuck around for greasy goodness.