The Alchemist Leeds - Good ideas, bad service

The Alchemist – Good ideas, bad service.

Apologies for the brief hiatus in blog posts, to put it frankly I’m skint and I couldn’t be arsed to write anything up I’ve tasted recently.

The Alchemist is a new cocktail bar/restaurant (mostly bar) in the new Trinity Leeds shopping centre. The jury’s still out on Trinity in my opinion but half of the shops haven’t opened yet and neither has the Trinity Kitchen, so we’ll let them off for the moment. The whole place looks nice anywayJ.

Back to the bars. The Alchemist is nice looking place found on the first floor of the shopping centre, tucked away in the corner near Urban Outfitters. It serves quirky cocktails hence the name and some standard gastro pub food, which I have to confess I haven’t tried so I can’t comment. The drinks menu has plenty to choose from and props to whoever came up with the cocktails some of them are quite creative not only with gimmicky dry ice etc... But flavour combinations as well.  

So first up a passion fruit and lychee meringue martini, the meringue being a glazed vanilla foam, oooooh well posh. Very well done and surprise surprise actually tasted of lychee. 

 

Second drink an Antica Collins basically orangey stuff, gin and bitters. Also very good and epically refreshing if not a little boring compared to a meringue martini.  

 

So exciting drinks nice looking venue what’s not to love? Well seeing as you asked I’ll tell you.

• One this is place is mental busy! Probably because everywhere else that serves exciting drinks is a lot harder to find in Leeds.

• Two the bar staff are crap. They’re well trained and know how to make a decent drink, the chap who made my Antica Collins stopped to taste it 3 times to check it had enough ice melted in it to serve. (By taste I mean tip a stirrer in and give it a lick, using a fresh stirrer each taste, so no he wasn’t pissed.) But he definitely looked like he didn’t want to be there. I’ve been twice now and each time been made to feel like I’ve just asked the bar staff to lick a turd off the bottom of my shoe when I’ve asked for a drink.  The last time I was there the queue was so big that the one girl actually bothering to make drinks had to plead with the other staff to stop chatting and actually serve some customers.

So in conclusion definitely worth a visit, maybe I got unlucky with the staff at the end of a long day?

7/10

1^st Floor

Leeds Trinity shopping centre

www.thealchemist.uk.com

Salvos Salumeria, Otley Road, Leeds

Hey ho, I’m still unbelievably poor as I’ve got a pending trip to London planned this month. However my mother has turned up to take me out for lunch with my sis Hurray.

We visited Salvos Salumeria which is found in the Headingley area of Leeds, It’s a small café which is next door but one to the main Salvos restaurant. For those of you who don’t know Salvos is the crown jewel of Italian dining in Leeds. Its awards include Salvo’s, voted the UK’s Best Neighborhood Italian Restaurant by Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4’s the “F Word and has received an AA Rosette in October 2010, 2011, 2012 and hopefully 2013

The Salumeria is an intimate dining room come deli, showcasing some fine Italian produce alongside serving classic Italian dishes. The restaurant features special dinner evenings, from musical soirees and wine tastings to regional dinners showing the best in Italian regional dishes. These themed evenings come highly recommended and offer tremendous value consisting of a ten course tasting menu using genuine and artisan ingredients, typical dishes and traditional specialists of a particular region in Italy. Accompanied with wine and at only £33.95 per person!!! This really is stonking value.

Requesting a table is recommended as these evenings are popular.
Before I get onto the review of the food I have to mention the tinned tomatoes they sell. They’re the same they use in the restaurant for the pasta dishes and not to belittle the chefs to much, but you can’t really cock it up when cooking with these beauties. I think they’re about £1.80 a tin but the tin is around 1kg in size and so much better than anything else you’ve ever tried trust me. They’ll make any pasta dish 10x better for minimal effort.

So the food. The service is attentive and fairly informal, it is only a café after all. We started with an Italian meat platter with fresh bread and olives and bottle of wine. The meat is of the highest quality as you’d expect I’d also especially recommend  the fennel salami, it was so delicious we bought some from the deli along with about 10 tins of the aforementioned tomatoes. The wine list is fairly extensive for such a small place this venue really benefits from its bigger brother 2 doors down.

Second course was a round of pizzas for my family and a Caesar salad for me. The pizzas were probably the weakest aspect of the meal, there very good just nothing special. If you’re dining in the main restaurant I’d recommend getting something a little out of your comfort zone, Last time I had liver which was the best I’ve eaten. The main restaurant excels with some very accomplished fine dining, if you’re after a pizza just go somewhere else.

The Caesar salad was huge and very tasty with large juicy pieces of chicken breast and massive croutons, maybe a little strong on the anchovy for some people but I can’t get enough of the salty blighters so I was happy.

We finished the meal off with some coffees, also pretty good. The bill came to about £70 I think, I can’t remember exactly because my mother paidJ.

I would highly recommend a trip into Headingley and spot of lunch at the Salumeria, The staff are really friendly, the guy that runs the place is always really helpful and they sell some simple food which is of the finest quality and the quality speaks for itself really.

8.5/10


107 Otley Rd
Leeds,
LS6 3PX

0113 275 8877

www.salvos.co.uk/salumeria-restaurant/