Dare to be different
When people go out to eat, they have different ideas in mind. Some people know exactly what foods they like and they wouldn’t care if they were sat in a barn if the food was good. Others are looking for excellent service, to be treated like kings and to feel valued, and they wouldn’t care if they were served a dish with no more than a couple of mouthfuls as long as the cuisine and the service was absolutely top notch. Then others want interesting. They want quirky. They want unusual. They want an all round novel experience. That’s what your humble writer is focusing on today! One thing you would never expect on a night out would be to cook your own food but that’s exactly where our journey begins…
This is the place where you can experience Korean table top BBQ first hand. Located in the centre of Leeds, Bulgogi Grill serve locally sourced meats and seafoods that have already been marinaded in traditional and specially selected Korean sauces and seasonings.
Once you are settled down, enjoying a beverage from their range of beers and cocktails, the first thing you will notice is a grill built into your table. You simply pick the food you want and place it on the grill with the long tongs provided. The grill can reach temperatures of 300°C so remember to supervise children carefully.
Throw on the prawns and squid, the beef and pork or the Bulgogi duck. You will have a good range of dips and vegetables to enjoy as well. Whatever tickles your taste buds, go for it, but one thing is for sure – this place will give you a unique and memorable experience.
Whether you are out with friends and family, taking the kids out or having a work do, Bulgogis will deliver good food and a great time.
And for a cool place for a date…
Why a great place for a date? Well, actually it is a great place, end of, whoever you’re eating with. But there’s one thing that comes to mind when people go on a date and that is to enjoy an atmosphere and experience that stimulates, that provokes thought and conversation, where two potential lovers can be open. Shears Yard has that magical touch. What’s special about Shears Yard then, I sense you wondering.
Well let’s start with the settings. With a really high ceiling, steel beams, an unusual lighting arrangement, bare brick walls, it is beautiful with a maverick feel to it and it gently encourages people to chill out. When it comes to the food, the team at Shears Yard don’t stand still, with a continually evolving menu of interesting, intriguing and unusual culinary combinations. Did you ever consider the flavour of sweet onion jam and baguette croutes, or fancy poached rabbit loin and parfait with pickled cauliflower? How about pressed pig’s head & ham hock for starters?
Shears Yard have a fully licensed bar and offer alfresco drinking in the summer months. Why not enjoy one of their own special cocktails that they make using homemade liquors and carefully selected premium spirits?
If you want to try something a little more different, they run tasting dinners where you can tuck into fine cuisine and sample their wines and sherries at the same time.
So go on…pop over to Wharf Street and take her or him out somewhere completely different. Even if you don’t hit it off, you will enjoy the ambience, the ambitious menu and a drink or two!
Leeds boasts of excellent food from around the world and at Mans Market, on Wellington Street, brings a fantastic menu of Chinese food that the Hong Kong brand declares has taken “many years through travelling, observation, education and learning” to develop. But what’s different or unusual about Mans Market?
For starters, Mans Market has an incredibly modern flavour of Leeds to it, perfectly fused with its Hong Kong origins. Its intention is to create an accessible, new age and hip place to enjoy Chinese food and and relax with drinks and it hits that mark perfectly. Truthfully I was torn between presenting a picture of the food or the venue. While the food looks and tastes superb, would you ever expect to see a bar like this in a Chinese restaurant?
By the way, the bar offers a wicked selection of drinks, including cocktails, and they offer Tsing Tao, a uniquely Chinese beer. The menu offers all the delights we love to taste at a Chinese restaurant including such treats as roast duck, char siu (pork) and greens, or salmon fillet, soy and greens. There is also an express menu on offer. The beauty of this restaurant, based in West Point, is the twist that they put on the food itself which is also somehow modernised and refreshed to blend with the unconventional decor.
If you like Chinese, love eating out in Leeds, have a respect for the traditional and the modern, the exotic and the local, give Mans Market a try. You will enjoy it.
From Hong Kong to Ethiopia…the Horn of Africa in Leeds…
Not only is this superb African restaurant based in Ashley Road, Harehills, the only Ethiopian restaurant in Leeds it offers an excellent menu that vegetarians will love as well as the meat lovers among us. They also cater for vegans.
It is the standard of the food, the authenticity of the food and the fact that no other restaurant in Leeds is delivering these tastes that makes this such an interesting and unusual venue to choose. Energy and love has clearly been focused on the cuisine more than anything. There’s nothing wrong with the decor and the ambience but the unique African flavour is where the action is.
Vegans, for example, can enjoy a combination platter of injera topped with a variety of strictly vegan curries and vegetables. This is called Beyaynetu or የጾም በየኣይነቱ in the native language but I couldn’t tell you how to pronounce that, not that pronunciation matters much when food tastes this good. There are plenty of other vegan and vegetarian choices on offer.
Meat eaters can indulge in the rich, juicy experience that is Derek Tibs (ደረቅ ጥብስ), pictured, which is lamb fried with rosemary, onions, special spices and served with salad and injera. Doesn’t that sound mouth-watering?
With Abyssinia, Ethiopia is brought to you, while you dine in Leeds.
Having been on a tour that has covered Hong Kong, Ethiopia, and Korea, it is time to give a nod to one of Leeds’s Thai restaurants, and one which is more than a little unusual, it is fair to say.
If you have ever had the pleasure of a visit to Thailand you will have experienced first hand that hustle, bustle and rich array of colours, smells and sounds that some of its busy streets have to offer. Zaap captures all of this, and more. Even the name has a zing to it, doesn’t it?
Zaap brings you the sweet and strange smells that go with an extraordinary range of Thai street food dishes, along with murals and brightly coloured tuk tuks that deliver the unique atmosphere of Thailand to your senses. That’s right; Thailand in Grand Arcade, Leeds! Does this look like Leeds to you?
It’s playful, relaxed, exotic and right here in Leeds but this is not just a place where you can escape from the everyday sights and sounds of an English city. Zaap delivers taste, and plenty of it.
From Moo Yang (หมูย่าง), grilled strips of pork on a skewer with sesame seeds, to Khow Kreb Tod (ข้าวเกรียบทอด), deep fried prawn crackers, Zaap has every type of Thai food you can imagine and an range of drinks that come from various places in the globe. The menu is rich and large so your tastebuds will be hit with just as much of a change of scenery as your eyes and ears are.
You’ve been introduced to 5 of the most interesting restaurants in Leeds but there are plenty more where these came from. It is difficult to write about Leeds’s food and drink scene without being totally awestruck by the choice available. You could travel the world without leaving the city.
If you have not treated yourself for a while, you are missing out, and all the wonderful places mentioned here are more than affordable so there’s no excuse for next sampling the tastes for yourself rather than reading about them.
Enjoy…
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