Dead Hippies and Humble Pie at Trinity Kitchen

Back in October 2013 I wrote a post for The Culture Vulture about the opening of Trinity Kitchen and what the food hall could have turned into.  I think it was fair and balanced.  My first impression was made at a preview event, which had been organised by Trinity to give the kitchens a taste of customers and service, before opening the doors to the salivating public.  It is fair to say that I had my reservations.

Whilst I was sure that, in keeping with the rest of Trinity, Trinity Kitchen was going to be a well designed space, I wasn't sure about how the mix of permanent vendors and rotating street food vans would work.  On the afternoon of the preview, the street food vans weren't trading so we could only eat from the permanents and very nice my food from Pho was too.  But, if I'm honest, it was the vans that I was interested in and it is the vans that I have been going back for, at least once every rotation.

Tonight I was invited back to Trinity Kitchen, with a clutch of other food bloggers for a free meal, to help welcome a new batch of street food vans.  The usual format of sit where you want and serve yourself was thrown out of the window and in an interesting twist, table service was introduced for the evening.  We were welcomed with a glass of fizz from 360˚, shown to our seats and presented with menus.  There were two choices from each eatery but I couldn't drag my eyes away from the Dead Hippie burger from newbies, The Meat Wagon.

Burgers are de rigueur in Leeds at the moment, usually piled so high with extras that you can't pick them up without losing half of them onto your lap.  These burgers, which require a knife and fork to eat them, are a pet hate of mine*, but the Dead Hippie was perfectly handleable.  The two patties were still pink and well seasoned, the "Hippie Sauce" was as good as any special sauce I've had on any other burger and the pickle was large enough to put up resistance without being overpowering.

Even the bun was up to the job, refusing to fall apart even though the burger was so juicy you could have wrung it out and had beef soup as a side dish.  It was a tasty burger and I'm glad I chose it, as at £8 I don't think that I would have bought one for myself.  Not when the other street food vans had cheaper and more interesting food on offer.

Highlights for me since Trinity Kitchen opened have been; Manjit's Kitchen, Fish &, Original Fry Up Material, and Donostia Social Club, all of which I'd welcome back to Trinity in a heartbeat.  I'll be popping back at some point this month to spend some of my hard earned cash and try some of the other new food on offer.  I do still have issues with the notion of Street Food in the UK, but while it is being presented so well in Trinity Kitchen, I think we'd all be foolish not to take advantage of the ever changing array of quality food being served in such an excellent environment.

*along with food served on chopping boards and chips served in a jenga stack.

Soul Kitchen at The Wardrobe

It's been a long time since I've had a meal in The Wardrobe.  So long in fact, that I only have a vague recollection of the evening.  It was a few weeks after R had been born and a couple of weeks before we could finally take him home from the Neonatal Unit at St James's Hospital.  We decided to have our last baby sitter free restaurant meal on our way home from visiting our tiny bundle of joy.  We had been to The wardrobe before, never for food, but as it was on the bus route home from Jimmy's we decided to give it a go.

I think that I had duck that night and I have no idea what Z had.  I couldn't even tell you what style of food the restaurant served.  It could have been some kind of British bistro offer but I'd be guessing.  It turns out that I'm not the only person who has struggled to pin down the restaurant in The Wardrobe.

The venue has recently changed hands and the new owners didn't know what to make of the restaurant either.  It seems that the eclectic menu had evolved over the previous twelve years without much thought or direction.  The perceived need for a restaurant at all in this glorious bar and music destination was the draw of the pre-theatre set, looking for a 2-for-1 before going to the Playhouse or Northern Ballet. 

Being on the outskirts of the city, it had always been imagined that people would only eat in The Wardrobe if they were soaking up some culture at the same time, but it doesn't look like that is the case.  The Wardrobe's neighbours, both good restaurants, always do good trade so something had to change and change it has.

Soul Kitchen, as the name implies, has its roots in the soul food of the deep south of America, Creole cookery and food from the Caribbean.  The new menu sees Shrimp and Grits and Jambalaya sat comfortably next to Jamaican Crab Cakes and Sweet Potato Macaroni and Cheese.  There is also a large grill menu.  I say large, there are only six options but they are all on the man verses food scale and can be customised with rubs and marinades before making their way to the table.

I was invited to an evening of tasting the new menu, along with a cohort of some of Leeds' number of food bloggers and foodies.  This was an interesting evening because The Wardrobe management were really keen to hear our feedback after the meal.  We were served a selection of dishes from the menu, shared them around the table and mused about what was on offer.

It's fair to say that it's not quite the finished article yet, but that is why we were invited.  The basic offer is fine and just needs turning up to eleven so that you really know you're in a soul kitchen.  I'm really looking forward to going back under my own steam to see if they take the feedback in the spirit that it was intended.  Hopefully it will cement St Peters Square as a food destination in Leeds regardless of what you are looking for.

The Soul Kitchen at The Wardrobe, 6 St Peters Square, Quarry Hill, Leeds, LS9 8AH.

The Old Peacock, Elland Road

We moved to Leeds in September 1999 and, against everyone's advice, we ended up renting in Beeston.  Although I had been a Leeds United fan since I was ten I had never visited the city.  I'd watched Leeds play live, but only at away games, so you can imagine my joy at discovering that I could see Elland Road from the end of my street.

After we'd settled into our new home I decided to take my first look at the stadium where my beloved Leeds play their home games.  Having walked down the steps of Beggers Hill, I was welcomed by the statue of Billy Bremner.  It felt like all of my Christmases had come at once.  I hadn't booked a tour so we just wandered around the outside of the ground getting misty-eyed.  We then stumbled across The Old Peacock* on the other side of Elland Road.  It felt rude not to pop in for a pint.

What we found was a local's pub, a bit worse for wear and festooned with Leeds United memorabilia.  Every available surface, apart from those dedicated to drinking, had signed shirts, old programs and faded newspaper cuttings on them.  The beer was what we had grown used to at university; a choice of two lagers or smooth flow bitter.  It was not a pub to write home about, but it was my new local and it did have two pool tables.

Much water has flowed under many bridges since then.  The pub's decline seemed inexorably linked to that of Leeds United.  As my team fell from grace, as did The Old Peacock.  I'm sure the global financial meltdown and the ban on smoking in pubs played their part, but as the gate reciepts dwindled at Elland Road, so did the foot-fall into the pub.

 

But, like a phoenix from the flames, The Old Peacock is back.  It is now being managed by The Ossett Brewery and, unlike recent variations on a tired theme, they are trying something a little different.  Rather than selling the usual pub fare they have transformed the Peacock into an Ale House and Kitchen.  I was invited along to the VIP opening to get a taste of what was on offer and can report good things.

Out with the smooth flow bitter and in with nine real ale pumps.  The new beer offer is mostly from The Ossett Brewery, along with a couple of guest ales and standard lagers.  The beer to look out for is 1919.  Named after the year that Leeds United were formed, it has been brewed specifically for The Old Peacock and will not be sold anywhere else.  1919 sold out by ten o'clock on the opening night and to me that is recommendation enough.  Sadly we didn't get to sample the food.  We did get a couple of canapés but they weren't really representative of the food that will be on offer.

It's not just the food and drink that has changed.  The place has a new feel too, as you would expect after a £400,000 facelift.  The wall to wall memorabilia has been replaced with a "one-off design" wallpaper featuring images of Leeds United's past.  The swirly carpets and matching upholstered stools and benches have been torn out and replaced with stylish wooden furniture and solid wood and tiled floors.  The pool tables have also gone creating space for a restaurant area that seats 40 people.

We had a good time on the opening night and a free drink is always welcome.  I've now seen the menu and I'm looking forward to my next visit even more, perhaps for Sunday lunch with the family.  I especially want to try the Thick Cut Pickled Brisket.

I've been longing for a decent pub, selling real ale and good fresh food, to open somewhere in Beeston for ages and it looks like my dreams have come true with the re-launch of The Old Peacock.  I only hope that Leeds United's fortunes are still linked to the pub as that would mean that good times are around.

*The Old Peacock is actually The New Peacock, or The New Old Peacock.  The original Old Peacock stood on the opposite side of Elland Road opposite the present McDonald's drive through.  It's thought that Leeds United got their nickname "The Peacocks" from the pub.

Primo's Gourmet Hot Dogs

It's just typical, isn't it?  After 300 posts on Tonight's Menu there was only one restaurant review.  Then suddenly two come along at once.  Whereas the last one was all bought and paid for, this review is courtesy of a freebie from Primo's Gourmet Hot Dogs.

For a long time now Primo's has been my go-to fast food restaurant.  Since finding out about Primo's, I've almost eaten every hot dog on their menu, but they keep introducing one off specials.  Every time I pop down to cross off another one of their standard dogs I'm faced with glories like Slum Dog, a hot dog with an Indian twist, or a raft of South American inspired hot dogs, the best of which was Argentinian and smothered in chimichurri sauce.

Creating all of these specials have given the staff at Primo's a taste for the extraordinary.  It was only logical that themed evenings would follow so that they could flex their imaginative culinary muscles.  It also made sense that the first of the Primo's Vs. events would take place during Leeds Loves Food!  I couldn't attend the initial night, Vs. New York but I was more than happy to get a table at the second event, Vs. Australia.

On arrival we were ushered to our table and asked if we were ready for our starters.  It was odd having table service in such a familiar fast-food setting, but I soon got used to it.  The starter of Coogie Bay crab and crayfish cakes with a mango salsa soon arrived, along with a bottle of Carlton Draught.  The fish cakes were superb, not as strong a crab flavour as I had expected.  The star was the salsa. The sweetness of the fruit worked brilliantly with the fresh herbs and the slightly salty fish cakes. If I'm honest, I could have eaten a bowl of it on it's own and I'm not a mad mango fan.

Next up, the main event.  No Australian theme night could be complete without Kangaroo on the menu and this was no different.  Of course Primo's being a Hot dog joint the Roo was in dog form.  I was really looking forward to this as I'd never had kangaroo before but, if I'm honest, the dog was lost under the flavour of the caramelised onion and mustard topping.  The Roo was served with Sweet Potato Chips, Coleslaw and a bottle of Victoria Bitter.  The two sides were great.  I have tried and failed to cook decent sweet potato chips a couple of times.  Whatever I'm getting wrong Primo's got spot on.

The third course was a home baked Lamington served with cream and a hot rum and banana cocktail.  Lamingtons are an almond sponge cake, covered in chocolate icing and topped with coconut.  I don't have a sweet tooth and was starting to feel full after the previous two courses but somehow I managed to delete the lamington and its mountainous Bundaberg cream accomplice.  I'm told that there was not as much alcohol in the rum punch as it felt.  As with mulled wine the heat added to the strength of the punch.  It went brilliantly with the sponge and was a good way to round off the meal.

The Primo's Vs. events are running every month until December and at £17.95 for a three course meal, including drinks, they are a steal.  I know fingers crossed I'll be able to go along to a few more of them, if not I'll still be heading down to The Corn Exchange for a hit of my favourite, The Classic Chicago.  The next Vs. event is "Dixie" on 4th July, Independance Day, if you are interested bookings, with a £5 deposit pp are being taken now in Primo's shop.

Kendell's Bistro

I don't do restaurant reviews* very often.  There are probably a number of reasons for this, which I'm not going to bore you with right now.  However, I think the main reason that I don't do many restaurant reviews, other than the fact that nobody asks me to, is that we rarely get the chance to eat in the kind of restaurants that I would like to review.  Most of our meals out take the form of Saturday lunch while shopping.  We frequent some good family friendly pubs and restaurants in Leeds but we're never there long enough to really get stuck into the menus.

Last month we had that rarest of things, a babysitter.  Z's Mum was visiting for the weekend and kindly offered to look after R so that we could have some "us time".  Not going out often left us with a dilemma, where to eat.  Leeds is awash with restaurants that we haven't eaten in.  A lot of them have had glowing reviews.  Some of them have so much hype that I feel like I have eaten there already.  Others have opened their doors and gone about the business of serving good food, without all of the bells and whistles that grand openings insist upon.  In the end we chose to go back to an old favourite, a place where we would spend more time if we had the time to spend, Kendell's.

Kendell's Bistro, on St Peter's Square, opened in 2007 and has been selling excellent French bistro food ever since.  I wouldn't say that we had been regular visitors since then.  In fact, it was a couple of years after they opened that we first found out that Kendell's even existed.  However, we fell in love with the restaurant on our first visit, which is why we have kept going back.

As always we faced the perennial problem of what to choose.  When faced with the kind of menu that Kendell's provide, that decision is doubly hard.  In all honesty I could happily have eaten everything that was on offer.  I passed on the binoculars as I had a great view of the floor to ceiling blackboard that acts as the only menu in the restaurant and started to deliberate.

By the time our pre dinner drinks arrived we had made our choices.  To start I chose Escargot (snails) and Z went for Coque St. Jacque (scallops).  I'd only had snails once before in France and to be honest I hadn't been impressed.  My overriding memory of that occasion was eating overly garlicked rubber balls.  I know a lot of people who would have never chosen snails again but I had a feeling that Kendell's wouldn't have anything on their menu that wasn't worth eating.

I was right.  Although served in the same ubiquitous white porcelain snail dish with plenty of garlic butter, that was where the similarity ended.  This dish of snails was topped with a pastry lid so the snails steamed in the garlic butter and avoided a bouncy send off.  Z's scallops were just as perfectly cooked but served in a less traditional manner.  Rather than being served in the shell, topped with mashed potato and cheese these were served shell-less with micro-greens and shards of crisp bacon which were a perfect foil to the soft sweetness of the seafood.

Unlike the starters, Z was not so keen to try my main course.  I had picked Rognon de Veau (calves liver).  Z has a very strong childhood memory of ordering rognon de veau by mistake on a family holiday in France.  So disturbed was she by the whole liver that was served to her, that she ended up swapping it for her friend's mother's dinner and hiding behind a propped up menu during the meal.

I didn't get a whole liver but slices of seared liver with a rich onion gravy and buttery mashed potatoes.  This was a real treat as we don't eat half as much offal at home as I would like.  To have it cooked so expertly was an added bonus.  Not to be out done, Z's Canard de Cassis (duck in black current sauce) was everything that she hoped for.  You could almost get drunk from the cassis in the sauce and yet it didn't over power the duck.

After all of that I was stuffed, but Z soldiered on to a third course.  More out of duty** than hunger, she chose Iles Flottantes (floating islands).  A light, fluffy meringue, bobbing in a sea of custard, is not something I'd ever encountered.  I dutifully tried some but it was too sweet for me.  That said I don't have much of a sweet tooth at the best of times.

As we were finishing off our wine I realised that the woman sat at the table behind us had ordered the exact same meal as me.  I thought I had been adventurous and a little off-piste with my choices, but perhaps there are more cavalier diners out there than I give credit for.

For the record, this was no freebie.  We chose to dine in Kendell's.  We weren't invited and I certainly wasn't asked to write a review.  I genuinely love the food, the wine, the not too attentive staff and the atmosphere.  I don't know when we'll next get the chance to go to Kendell's Bistro but I know that I'm already looking forward to it.

*Some would contest that I don't really have a food blog at all due to the lack of reviews and recipes.
**her mother's favourite dessert

Johnny Fontane's

When I started Tonight's Menu back in November last year, I did so to see if I would be able to write about something I love on a daily basis.  I decided at the offset I would keep the blog to why we are eating what we are eating every night.  There would be no recipes, no measurements and definitely no reviews. Also the blog would be updated daily.

Recipes have started sneaking in. It's more the method of what we've cooked rather than a full blown, stage by stage write up, but there are still no measurements.  The posts are quite often added a day or two behind the actual event and there have been occasions that I have missed a day completely. However, I have become comfortable with this as time has passed.  The final standing, unwritten rule, was no reviews.

Sure, there have been nights where we have eaten in restaurants, but true to the nature of Tonight's Menu, I have always written about why we aren't eating at home.  The restaurant in question always gets a mention, and of course I write about the food*, but not to the extent that a reviewer would.

Then, out of the blue, I was contacted by the management of Johnny Fontane's, a new independent restaurant which shortly opens to the paying public of Leeds.  I was asked if I would write a review of their new venture in exchange for a free meal.  I was, in equal measure, flattered and shocked to be asked, exited at the thought of an independent burger bar and concerned that this might change the direction of Tonight's Menu.

I asked friends who write review blogs what they would do and sought solace from Z.  I even contacted Johnny Fontaine's directly regarding my reservations and after a chat I accepted their invitation.  That, in a nutshell, is how Z and I find ourselves sat at a table with three other food bloggers.  I have never seen so many people taking photographs of food in one place.

The meal deal was simple, any single burger, any side dish and a drink, from the extensive drinks menu (excluding spirits and champagne).  This would normally be great value at £9.99 but tonight the deal was sweeter as it was free.  Z and I both chose bacon cheese burgers.  I had onion rings and Z went for the seasoned fries for our side dishes.  I ordered at the bar and was handed a lump of impersonal plastic that would "flash and jump around the place" when my food was ready.

Our wait wasn't long.  My tricorder went off and I shuffled over to the counter to pick up my tray of food.  The experience was somewhere between waiting for an aisle at bowl-arama and being served school dinner.  Only I kept my own shoes and the burgers at my school were never this good!

The burgers where perfectly cooked, still juicy and pink in the middle and seemed to consist of nothing more than meat and some seasoning.  Our sides were a little disappointing.  The promise of home cut fries filled me with joy but ours were soggy and even though they were "seasoned" I still had to add salt and sauce.  The onion rings split Z and I.  We both love onion rings, especially when they aren't reformed from onion scraps. These were made from chunky slices of proper onion, but I felt that the coating had been applied ham-fistedly and then overcooked so that the slightly burnt bitterness of the coating masked the sweetness of the onions.

I'm sure that by the time Johnny Fontane's opens to the paying public, the food niggles will be ironed out, but I fear the impersonal service is there to stay.  You don't spend good money on flashing lumps of plastic and then not use them, do you?  There were plenty of staff milling around clearing tables, but even then, eye contact was minimal, never mind a complimentary "how is your meal?"  Perhaps I'm being a fuddy-duddy but I like a bit of a smile with my service, I also quite like some service.

One final thing, just in case your thinking "doesn't sound that great" the beer list is great and Z informs me that her cherry milkshake was awesome and she really likes a good milkshake.  Will I go back once they open?  Probably, the burgers were good and the price is right.  An independent American dinner is a welcome addition to the Leeds restaurant smorgasbord, I just wish it felt like an independent rather than trying to emulate a chain before it even opens.

*this is a food blog after all.