Malmaison Brasserie

Wed 8 Aug 2007

Last night the eating and drinking machine rolled on to the Malmaison Brasserie. The Brasserie is set in the basement of the pretty Malmaison building on Swinegate, just a short walk from the city centre.

We were a little early for our reservation so we started off with drinks in the bar. It was a bit noisy and hotel-bar like for me, though the low lighting, purple table lights and sofas were a good start. I ended up being treated to a glass of Veuve vintage, so no complaining from me!

The Brasserie has a 'home grown' menu where the food is sourced from within 30 miles of Leeds. It's £12.50 for 2 courses or £15.50 for 3, or you can opt for the à la carte menu. In our party of four we had a bit of mix and matching. I started with the risotto milanese. Other starters were squid and scallop salad, pea and leek tart and (from the home grown menu) a niçoise salad.

The pea and leek tart was the star dish - sitting on top of some asparagus spears, it had the most incredibly light, crispy and short pastry. I thought the risotto was very good although perhaps a trifle over seasoned and both the salads were well received.

For main course I chose the Gloucester old spot pork, pan fried, with sorrel and water cress and a gooseberry chutney. It was very good. The pork was moist and the gooseberry chutney was delicious. The lamb chops, with roast garlic, girolle mushrooms and pesto, was a huge portion: 4 fat, pink chops presented on a board with a copper pan of pesto. From the home grown menu the selection was Goosnargh chicken with tomato and cous-cous, and the final choice was streak-frites. We ordered an additional portion of chips, as well as carrots with chervil and a portion of spinach.

By the time we arrived at dessert, we were slowing down. We shared a crème brûlée and a serving of cheese. The cheese comes out on the cheese trolley and you choose a selection of 5 from the menu (there was a choice of over 10 cheeses last night). The crème brûlée was delicious too: a crispy, caramelised top with a soft, just set custard underneath.

Although I didn't get to look at the wine list in detail, it looks monumental, and even contains a table of contents. We started with a Tim Knappstein riesling and followed with an American zinfandel. We wrapped up with a selection of dessert wines and liqueurs: Frangelico, Banyuls and cognac.

The meal stood out for several reasons: the food was 'bloody good' (I quote my father), the spelling on the menu (so often a point of downfall) was good (apart from a very dodgy spelling of liqueur!) and the service was excellent. The staff were cheerful, knowledgeable and all very professional.

The location and style of the restaurant puts the venue firmly in the special occasion league, but without outrageously high prices. In addition, you will get a reservation far more easily than you will at Anthony's, and many diners will find the food far more accessible.

1. Malmaison Brasserie, 1 Swinegate, Leeds, LS1 4AG, phone: 0113 398 1000

tagged with: leeds, restaurant

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Fairuz

Mon 25 June 2007

As you may recall, Monday was rather wet. I work with a lot of people who live quite a long way away from Leeds so the office emptied rather quickly. Rather responsibly, I went outside, ran around in the rain for about an hour and took a lot of photos. Which was fine, until I realised I was back in the office with a sodden jacket and jeans drenched to the thighs. The walk back into town was rather cold and soggy.

After some essential chores, a couple of beers at North were in order (ticking a few off the birthday card) and before we knew it I was ready for something to eat. I suggested Akbar's, but we'd had curry the night before, so we traipsed over to Thai Cottage, but they were closed. Back towards Fuji Hiro* (open but not serving) and finally into Fairuz.

Fairuz is in a strange location, rather tucked away and with the feeling of almost being in the basement of an office block. We've been meaning to go for ages, but have just never got around to it. Fortunately, on Monday night, even though it was late and there was just one diner finishing off his coffee, the sole staff member on board was happy to serve us.

Lebanese food suits itself very well to loads of small dishes and eating for hours, but, at 10pm on a Monday night just one dish was called for. I could not help but choose the chicken shewarma and Andy opted for lamb neck.

The shewarma was delicious. It was flavoured with mint and oregano and was served on the most beautiful, fine, light, crispy bread, with a lovely lemon-garlic yogurt like sauce. It came with a simple salad. And for around £7.50 it was a generous portion. Andy's lamb (around £10), while it looked a lot smaller, was absolutely gorgeous. It was so tender and was spiced with clove and cinnamon. It was served with similarly flavoured rice and some salad. On first appearances I won, but after we sampled each other's food we couldn't decide on a winner.

If you can't make decisions like that there are two 'all in' type menus and at lunchtime the restaurant offers a buffet. They also offer an early bird menu between 5 and 7. We both thought the food was lovely, and we're also full of admiration for the one man, who seated us, took our orders, brought our drinks and cooked our food.

So - it was bad luck on several counts that actually meant we visited Fairuz for the first time, but now we have been, we'll definitely be making trips back.

1. Fairuz, Fairfax House, Merrion Street, Leeds, LS2 8JU, ph: 0113 243 4923

*We visited both Thai Cottage and Fuji Hiro back in April and loved them both.

tagged with: leeds, restaurant, lebanese

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Arcadia - Pie Night

Mon 18 June 2007

A relatively recent development at Arcadia is the Monday night 'Pie Night'. Pie, peas and a pint (Black Sheep or Deuchars) for £5.

Why I thought this was a good idea, since I loathe peas, I don't know, but I managed to rustle up a group to try this out. Which was all well and good until we found out Arcadia had one pie left. Fortunately, the full kitchen was open until 8 so, while Andy ate the remaining pie, the rest of us sampled the rest of the menu.

A couple of us went for the New Yorker salad: a big bowl of lettuce, celery, walnuts (they're a superfood now!), blue cheese and chicken, served with garlic bread. The great thing about this salad is that it wasn't drowned in dressing, so you could actually taste all the different ingredients. It was a huge bowl and, for £5, I was pretty impressed. The garlic bread was a bit nondescript, but there was certainly nothing wrong with it.

Other options sampled from the main menu included the Cumberland sauce with mash (also £5) and one of the specials, lamb shank, at £7.50. The lamb shank looked really good: the meat was falling off the bone, and the report back was that it was absolutely delicious.

So that brings us to the pie, which didn't involve pastry so Andy was unhappy. He also felt it was a served with a rather excessive amount of marrowfat peas. The gravy looked a bit watery and thin and it was all a bit disappointing. Which is a shame, because the rest of us were tucking in to some very tasty and cheap food. Given the pie-indifference, I'm also not too sure about checking out Arcadia's curry night (that's Tuesday). If you are eating with your beer, I recommend sticking to the menu as those of us who did were not disappointed.

After our meal, we headed down to the Box for Monday quiz. It's free but you'll have to be good to win it, as last night you would have needed to best 28.5 out of 31. After a couple of hours in Arcadia with all those beers, we were no competition!

1. Arcadia, 34 Arndale Centre, Headingley, LS6 2UE, phone: 0113 274 5599
2. The Box, 8 Otley Road, Headingley, LS6 2AD, phone 0113 2249266

tagged with: headingley, restaurant, leeds

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Loch Fyne

Sat 9 June 2007

Loch Fyne sits in the now fully refurbished City Square. When I first moved to Leeds (the first time, in 2001) City Square was under scaffolding and remained that way for what seemed like an age. It's been open for a while and despite its proximity to the railway station and being surrounded by traffic it's a very pleasant place to sit out and have a coffee or some lunch.

And that's exactly what we did. Inspired by Loch Fyne's £11 lunch promotion we headed off to check it out.

The £11 lunch menu is quite short: a choice of four starters and four mains. You also get a glass of red, white or rosé wine. Andy started with the squid tentacles (mis-spelled on the menu) in chilli oil, and I went for the chicken liver paté with oatcakes. The squid was tender, tasty and had a good chilli kick. The paté was pretty good - and I actually really enjoyed it in combination with the oatcakes.

Our main course choices were grilled sardines with herbs and garlic and penne pasta with a smoked salmon cream sauce. As side dishes we had chips and a red onion and tomato salad. The sardines looked tasty and were quickly demolished. The pasta realy only deserves the description 'OK'. The sauce was a bit oily and salty and I found the dish rather cloying. I did like the addition of grainy mustard to the sauce, but I really felt I could have done a lot better myself at home. The tomato salad was also OK - after all, it was just tomato and red onion, but there was just a bit too much dressing for me.

The biggest disappointment was reserved for the chips. They were awful. They epitomised everything that's wrong about nasty pub oven chips. For a fish restaurant, sub standard chips are a disgrace. There's no excuse for not chopping some potatoes, frying them once and then frying them a second time on demand. None at all.

Of course, over two courses we also needed a second drink: a pint of San Miguel for Andy, a glass of sancerre for me (and improvement on the house rosé).

The total bill came to just over £30. For £11 you do get a lot of food, but whether you're inclined to eat it all is a different matter. The cheap lunch deal hasn't encouraged me to head back to Loch Fyne to spend more on the à la carte menu.

I have been told that Restaurant, also in City Square, is good but pricey. I managed to put one mate off Loch Fyne, who went to the Foundry instead and said it was lovely. Just two more places to put on the 'to do' list!

tagged with: leeds, restaurant, seafood

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Nooshi

Wed 6 June 2007

I don't eat out in Headingley enough. Drinking - that's a different matter because Arcadia is so good, but eating - hardly ever.

I an attempt to redress my city-centre bias last week I headed off to Nooshi. Actually, (ex)Housemate and I wanted something quick and cheap, and I had a cold so something spicy fitted the bill.

After 5pm, Nooshi offers a dinner deal - a noodle box plus a beer for £6 (unless you go for duck or seafood, in which case it's £6.50). (ex)Housemate went for the hoisin duck noodles (without vege - so they will customise your order) and I opted for the spicy chicken and vegetable.

I'll leave aside the fact that the spicy chicken and vegetable contained mini-corn (this is the devil's food) and focus on the rest of the dish. Actually, there's not really a lot to say. There wasn't really a lot of chicken in it, the veggies were unexciting and the sauce tasted a lot like sweet chilli sauce: a bit too sweet and cloying for me.

Nooshi specialises in noodles and sushi, but also offers juices, smoothies, green tea and ice cream. I'd probably nip in to try out their sushi, but when it comes to more noodles I'll probably be heading back to Fuji Hiro in ... the city centre.

It seems that Nooshi haven't been too busy winning over fans and aficionados of Asian food: Sourrain was also a bit underwhelmed.

tagged with: nooshi, noodles, headingley, leeds

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Harvey Nichols - Fourth Floor Restaurant

Fri 2 Mar 2007

Following straight on from the beer and food masterclass, Andy and I stayed put and had our dinner in the Fourth Floor Restaurant. We could have chosen from the very reasonably priced (£17 for 2 courses, £22 for 3) prix fixe menu, which matched food with beer, and while that would have been more in the spirit of the evening, we were rather taken by some dishes from the a la carte menu.

The first thing that impressed was the quality of the bread and the lightly salted French butter. So often you go to a good restaurant and, for some reason, get served rubbish bread. And I, at least, tend to remember this: Cafe 21 in Newcastle being a case in point. But not so at Harvey Nichols: the meal started as it intended to go on.

I started with lamb cooked with a harissa coating and served with a goat's cheese and rocket salad. The lamb was very barely cooked and incredibly tender, and the heat of the harissa cut through the richness of the goat's cheese perfectly. It was a very simple plate of food which worked remarkably well. Unfortunately, in the drinks department I'd veered away from the beer and opted for a glass of Sancerre. While the wine was a lovely, delicate, dry and very apple-y example of a sauvignon blanc it was completely swamped (not unexpectedly) by the harissa.

Andy stuck with beer (more specifically, the Schneider Weisse) and started with what was basically a glorified potato dauphinoise. It was absolutely delicious: laden with good butter, cream and cheese, and the potatoes still with some bite and shape. A really simple dish, executed well and not served in an overwhelming portion.

For main course I chose grilled pork with a potato and beetroot hash and a kind of apple salsa. While I did feel my pork was a little overcooked, I was inclined to overlook this because the potato and beetroot combination was fantastic (for some reason, it would never have occurred to me that the earthiness of beetroot would go so well with potato - obvious, when it's pointed out though!), and the apple salsa (tiny cubes of apple dressed in olive oil, lemon juice and lashings of parsley - I think) was stunning. Everything on my plate worked very well together and, when matched with my green apple Sancerre, it was even better.

Andy opted for venison, which was beautifully tender and juicy - and must have been good because I didn't get very much of it!

We finished off with coffees, even though parts of the dessert menu were very tempting.

Now, this all sounds like rather unqualified praise - and given that the Fourth Floor won Best Restaurant in last year's Let's Eat Leeds awards, that is what you might expect. But, there is one huge drawback. And that is the service. The waiter we had was, in a word, atrocious. He leaned across the table and us, didn't so much carry plates as wave them around in the air, and when he asked us if we were enjoying our meal he didn't look at us and wandered off before we gave an answer! I actually caught the eye of someone at another table who was also 'enjoying' this unique style of service, and almost collapsed in giggles as this diner rolled his eyes!

The final bill was around the £75 mark (this included the 10% service charge Harvey Nicks add), which I didn't think was over the top - or at least, it wouldn't have been, if the quality of service had matched the lovely food.

1. Harvey Nichols Fourth Floor Restaurant, 107-111 Briggate, Leeds, LS1 6AZ, phone 0113 204 8000

tagged with: harvey nichols, leeds

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Arcadia

Sun 11 Feb 2007

Ah, Arcadia ... a pastoral idyll ... and also an excellent pub in Headingley! We've had some very happy drinking experiences in this bar and I'm a huge fan of the various pub dogs, not to mention the good range of real ales, along with the continental beers which keep Andy happy.

But this time our visit wasn't for drinking purposes but for eating. Arcadia offers Sunday lunch for just £5.95. Lunch starts at 1pm and dinners are available until they're gone. This does mean that you need to get there quickly ... overheard at the bar on Sunday was the shocking news there were only 16 dinners available!

We arrived just before 1pm but apparently the kitchen was suffering from a power failure, so dinner wouldn't be on for another three quarters of an hour. This gave us time to sort out our beer and newspaper situation (Durham Dark Secret for me, and Warsteiner for Andy) before worrying about whether or not we would opt for beef or chicken.

We both opted for beef and it wasn't long before huge plates of roast dinner appeared. We both had two hefty slices of roast beef, cauliflower au gratin, broccoli, carrots, Yorkshire pudding, pumpkin mash, roast potatoes ... and lashings of gravy. Given that the kitchen had had to deal with a power failure it's hard to be critical of the food - and it will come as no surprise to regular readers that I found the beef overcooked. I also appreciate that it's impossible to roast a joint of beef so that it's cooked to everyone's liking, so I'm prepared to overlook this. I also thought the broccoli was overcooked - normally it's one of my favourite vegetables but this time it was left to one side. Everything else was just fine.

For £5.95 one does not expect an haute cuisine experience - and at Arcadia, you do not get this. However, you do get a very solid, enjoyable plate of food, which you can wash down with your choice from a wide range of beverages - including well kept beers on good rotation. Arcadia is one of the few bars in Leeds where a dark beer is consistently available, and they always feature beers from small, independent breweries. On Sunday they even had Thwaites Mild on.

Lunch at Arcadia ends up being about more than the plate of food in front of you. On Sunday we had a greyhound and a terrier, as well as the (almost) resident boxer. There is always a slightly unusual mix of people, and if you sit at the front, you can also people watch.

While smokers will, undoubtedly, find the no smoking policy a bit of a pest, they should regard this as good practice for the summer.

And the rest of us can view Arcadia as a place where we can have an interesting, well kept pint, along with some tasty food, without parting with much cash at all.

1. Arcadia, 34 Arndale Centre, Headingley, Leeds LS6 2UE, phone: 0113 274 5599.

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Red Chilli

Fri 09 Feb 2007

I've written about Red Chilli a couple of times before, and while I've usually been quite enthusiastic I've always wondered what I'd think if I actually visited without sitting in the pub beforehand.

On Friday night, a half pint of Golden Pippin into the evening, I actually managed it. In summary, I actually found it rather disappointing. And at this point, I should add the disclaimer that I am not the greatest fan, or aficionado, of Chinese (Szechuan or otherwise) food.

The dining experience didn't start well. We had a reservation, we arrived and our table was not ready. And this was at 7:30pm! Red Chilli doesn't have a waiting area, and while the bar is near the front counter, it's not set up for hanging around. The front of house staff didn't even suggest that we order drinks, so it's lucky we took it upon ourselves!

In the past, influenced as I have been by a few beers, I've been less than impressed by the level of service at Red Chilli, and Friday night did very little (if anything) to improve that impression. I do not want to be left loitering in a lobby for a reserved table and I most certainly don't want to hear an absolute cacophony of crockery while the staff set the table next to me. If you add this to previous encounters (where the staff haven't been able explain dishes on the extensive, but scantily worded, menu) you can probably understand why I'm feeling less than generous.

But let's move from service to food. As usual, the portions are hugely generous. We were at a table of six and started with just three starters: half an aromatic duck, a serve of salt and pepper ribs and a cold spicy beef salad. I do quite enjoy the salt and pepper ribs and the spicy beef, although I personally find the aromatic duck a little pointless (partly because I don't like hoisin sauce, and partly because I find the cost offensive). We moved on to two hot pot style dishes - one pork and one chicken, a tofu dish and pork in sweet vinegar. The pork in sweet vinegar, chosen by Andy, was a bit of a disappointment as it was more a sweet and sour style pork - battered, fried and overly sweet. The chicken in the hot pot had quite a strange texture - almost no texture at all. The pork in the hot pot was sliced incredibly finely and the chillis in it had a fearsome kick. The tofu I didn't like at all.

Now - I realise I am very much in the minority here. Most people I know (and this includes someone from Hong Kong, who is better placed to make a judgement than me) love Red Chilli. You cannot fault portion size or even value for money (I guess - for the above food, which was more than enough for 6 people, with beers, it cost £17.50 a head, including tip). But I often leave feeling as though the staff feel they have done me a favour by serving me. At best I could describe the service as desultory. And I always feel the food is less than clever. Perhaps part of that is that I'm sceptical about how well a brigade can execute such a massive menu. And perhaps part of that is that I am always left feeling as though I've eaten a small salt pan, with a good dash of oil.

So - Red Chilli - good for a post beer feed, but I think for slightly more serene night out I'll take my stomach elsewhere.

1. Red Chilli, 6 Great George St, Leeds LS1 3DW, phone 0113 242 9688.

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