Recent eats (Leeds edition)

I couldn’t bear to have that last post sitting there at the top of the blog for ever. Even though Minx’s absence is still felt every day. 

Back to food! And we’ve been to a couple of new Leeds venues recently that are well worth a mention.

First up, I think this ricotta and tomato on toast from Eat Your Greens is one of the prettiest lunches that I have had in a while.

I’m not sure that I quite understand the concept of the place - if, indeed, it has such a thing (and perhaps the question is, why does it need one?) There is a light lunch menu which was predominantly veggie when we were there; dinner is more substantial and with a few more options for the carnivores, although still definitely somewhere you could quite comfortably go with a vegetarian friend. There is also a small grocery area, selling some fresh produce and some interesting looking pantry items. Service was friendly, but leisurely. 

Then the other week we got to Empire Cafe which attracted quite a lot of local attention when it got a glowing write up from renowned food critic (and Masterchef stalwart) Jay Rayner. Reader, we loved it so much we are already booked to go back. If you like rotisserie chicken then you must make a pilgrimage - these birds, lathered and crumbed and cooked on a wall of flame, produced some of the most delicious, tender chicken that either of us have ever eaten. 

NB: in addition, an intriguing array of starters or small plates listed, so be sure and go hungry enough that you can squeeze in a few nibbles. D was most taken with his duck parfait éclair (although it was rich - one between two would have been fine). 

Leeds has popped up on the tellybox as well. Rick Stein paid a visit to the very wonderful Bundobust while recently doing a food tour of Britain - so far, so predictable (with the number of travelogues Stein has done over the years he must surely have been to pretty much everywhere by now?) But somewhat more intriguingly, Adam Richman of Man vs Food fame, visited Leeds as part of a show in which he drives around eating traditional British dishes in the places from whence they take their name. So, in Leeds, he was in YORKSHIRE so he ate a YORKSHIRE pudding, he had a SCONE in SCONE. You get the drift. He seemed genuinely interested in the food culture of the city and genuinely appreciative of the dishes he got to try in venues that varied from the market food hall to the somewhat-posher-than-a-market The Owl.* Which was nice as sometimes it is easy to take the place that you live for granted, especially Leeds which can be a bit grey and appears to have been entirely subsumed under scaffolding for the last ten thousand years.

(*Although it should be noted that The Owl's very first iteration was actually based in Kirkgate Market.)