Meat liquor

Meat liquor.

Yep I finally went to meat liquor. It didn’t live up to my high expectations spawned from 2 years of waiting for a visit.  I’m bitterly disappointed that is was merely good and not amazing. The burger was nice the meat was tasty but it didn’t blow my mind. The chilli cheese fries had nothing on Almost Famous’s version in Manchester and to top it off about 18 months ago I told my GF this was meant to be the most amazing burger on the planet, she wasn’t that impressed I’d dragged her away from the Disney store for this vaguely average offering.

So I’m going to go cry myself to sleep. Please leave me in peace. Here are some pictures. 

 R.I.P two years of lofty anticipation.

7/10 (I was expecting 12/10)

www.meatliquor.com/

74 Welbeck St  London W1G 0BA
020 7224 4239

Angelica, Leeds trinity - Bar Review

Angelica, Leeds trinity.

The entrance to Angelica can be found on the top floor of the Trinity shopping centre or from the lift out the back off Boar lane near Holy Trinity church. It’s Bar/Restaurant situated above Crafthouse, the other offering from the D&D London.

Let me just start by saying I wanted to hate this place! I tried to come here on the opening night of the Trinity shopping centre but I was refused entry to Angelica by the doorman because I had trainers on and there was about 2 inches of snow outside! Anyway I can see where the management was coming from on the opening day keeping out the riff raff. After all Crafthouse and Angelica are D&D’s first offering  outside London and only the cream of the northern crop should expect to visit.

Second time around I came after work suited and booted and was allowed to venture inside this time. I would like to point out the dress code doesn’t seem as strict now as it did on opening night, some cheeky chops had made it in, in his trackies (I salute you sir).  

 

So no food this time I just popped in for a quick drink, the menu looks good for light bites and lunch and they have a raw seafood bar which grabbed my attention maybe next time I’ll order some sushi. We sat on the outdoor terrace which has some great views of the city, I can see it being packed out here when the weather picks up i.e. bank holiday Monday coming up. There is plenty of heating outside as well to try and compensate for the glorious British weather. We had a cognac I can’t remember which but it was about £5, a glass of white wine and a bottle of Timothy Taylor’s landlord beer. It came to around £16 with a tip for table service included, which I think is very reasonable when you take the luxurious surroundings, table service and the view into account.

 

Get your self here for a bite to eat and a drink on a sunny day, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather go in the city centre if the weathers nice?

Level 6 Trinity Leeds 70 Boar Lane,

Leeds, LS1 6HW

http://www.angelica-restaurant.com/

Da Breakfast Club, Soho.

Da Breakfast Club, Soho.

Yes I know everyone in London has already been to one of the Breakfast club’s branches, but I haven’t so I went and I’m going to tell you about it.

After queuing for half an hour from 9:15am on a Saturday morning, we finally made it in to the Soho venue of the Breakfast club. This places reputation precedes itself when it comes to breakfast in London and to be honest I don’t why? I can’t tell you any specific reason why I felt I had to go on Saturday morning, maybe they’ve just hit the nail on the head with the name? “Where shall we go for breakfast? How about the Breakfast club.” Who could say not to that?

Anyway we went so it doesn’t really matter now. The place is bright yellow and crammed full of tables with some trendy looking staff and a great soundtrack thrown in the mix. Top that off with loads of bacon and pancakes and were cooking on gas woo.

I was determined to pick something I wouldn’t normally eat this time of the morning so I went for Huevos al Benny (eggs Benedict with chorizo peppers and fresh chillies). It was bloody lovely I must say, except the yolks weren’t very runny in my poached eggs L . I’ve always been a fan of peppers and spicy food with eggs on a morning, ever since I had migas with chorizo and fried eggs one morning. Oh and after my friend’s American gf convinced me that hot sauce on a cheese omelette is amazing. The charred peppers hiding under the poached eggs were particularly good on this dish and the addition of fresh chilli really helped cut through the rich hollandaise, the chorizo was pretty good quality as well. So we’re in agreement then it was good even without a runny yolk.

The other thing we went for that morning was the classic full works pancakes, these were pretty good as well, a nice errrby sausage, eggs and loads of bacon and unlimited maple syrup yummmm. They really don’t skimp on the bacon in this place, it comes in a giant tangled ball straight out the deep fat fryer I think.

So there you go, you probably know all about this place already anyway it’s not exactly a hidden gem anymore. My advice it’s worth the queue if you get there early enough. When we were leaving at 10:30am the queue had grown to about 30 ppl, so I wouldn’t bother turning up any later than 9:30am.

P.S. check inside the drawers in the tables, I had a good 10 mins of delight leafing through the notes and poems previous customers had left in there.

8/10 (would be 9 with a runny yolk)

www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com

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/

Forkly, Food App

Seeing as I am skint, I’ve decided to tell you about my favourite food related App. Some of you may have noticed that most of the photos used in my blog, contain a small fork followed by the words “Forkly”. This is because most of the photos I use, I have usually uploaded to Forkly beforehand and use them later in the blog.

So what is Forkly and why is it so amazing. Forkly is a free food rating app from Brightkite founders Brady Becker and Martin May which lets you Taste and discover other dishes. Released in 2011 the App has had relative success and now has a hardcore fan base of daily users, myself included. Although similar to competitor Foodspotting , Forkly’s emphasis has been more on rating food items, not just taking pictures of them. There is also more of a community feel to Forkly, once you get to know the regular users in your area.

On Forkly, add a "taste" to say what you're eating or drinking and what you think about it. The app presents you with the option "Loved It," "Liked It," "It's OK" and "Not for Me" options. You can choose to add a photo or comment on the dish, and share the bite-sized review with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Your tastes are posted to the activity feed. Other users can follow along and indicate that they want to try your tastes, and also gain you influence points in the process. Think of it as Twitter but for food J

The discover tab is used to find out what's popular at nearby places, as determined by other Forkly users' tastes. You can also specify if you’re wanting to look for Breakfast, Desert, Drinks etc.

The App offers an easy way to look at specific dishes of restaurants in your Local area or further afield. You can also look for dishes you have “wanted” in your local area which is one of the best features of the app. I have used this feature religiously when in London and deciding what to do for lunch on the spur of the moment to great success.

 The app also provides you with a daily dose of “food porn”, I find myself most evenings spending 5 minutes to scroll through my feed of followed users and ogle at the tasty things they’ve eaten or cooked recently and the “Want” tab saves anything you want reminding you to eat it later on.

Bringing pictures of beautiful food right to your doorstep and providing an easy insight into the best pig out spots in foreign territory Forkly really is a top class app for true greedy guts.

Or to quote their website “Forkly makes it ridiculously easy to match your taste buds with the food and restaurants around you. Capture and share your tastes while dining out, and Forkly will help you discover a new dish around the corner, the best burger in town or your favourite cocktail in a new city.”

BOSH

BrewDog Leeds

Just a quick one today. Mainly because its getting near the end of the month and I haven’t been out anywhere to eat.

I went to the New BrewDog bar in Leeds on Tuesday night and was impressed.

Firstly the place looks great I’ve included some pictures off the Brewdog website below (I didn’t get any of my own because I was to busy getting sloshed on 13% beer).

Also I have to recommend the staff, they were the most attentive bar staff I’ve ever come across and every pint was followed with “enjoy your beer”. They were also helpful in choosing what drink I wanted and coerced me into tasting 3 different beers before I picked, when all I asked for was the palest. Very helpful indeed.

The beers were all delicious and I drank plenty of stuff I wouldn’t normally touch, which is great. Prices were a bit high end, £4.20 a pint. Some of the 1/3 pints were £3.65 but you’re paying for the taste I guess.

But, It’s the kind of place you might take your lady friend to enjoy a drink, or maybe your dad for one. I wouldn’t go with the attention of having a heavy one as after 5 different drinks which came to a total of about 2 ½ pints in volume I was pretty full and sickly.

I expect it isn’t the intention of BrewDog for their customers to come down and enjoy copious amounts of alcohol and then go hit the town, but that was my mistaken intention on the first visit.

So get yourself down here and try some beers you wouldn’t normally drink. Some of there stuff is delicious and the men all have great beards, what more could you ask for.

(Oh and the played some Fleetwod Mac that’s worth 1 bonus point)
9/10

Unit 2, White Cloth Hall,Crown Street,
Leeds,
LS1 7RB.

www.brewdog.com