Anthony's Patisserie

Two pairs of shoes into a quick shopping trip in Leeds is about the right time to stop for lunch. Anthony’s Patisserie in the Victoria Quarter has a surprisingly varied menu for a small place including sandwiches, pasta, jacket potatoes and salads.

I ordered tea and an egg mayonnaise and bacon sandwich. This came on a sub roll and was generous with the filling. It was served with kettle chips on the side.

Mum had chorizo and tomato pasta, which was a generous portion for the reasonable price of £6.50.

Service was efficient and the setting is lovely – a quick review for a quick lunch!

Kobe, Horsforth

Kobe is part of the Arc Inspirations group which also owns, among others, Napa in Roundhay and the Arc in Headingley. The great thing about Kobe in Horsforth is that they have a brilliant outdoor area, with chairs, tables and booths. The area is covered and is great for sitting out on a warm day and enjoying a drink or a meal. We did both!


Food is ordered at the bar and waiters bring it to the table. Service is efficient and friendly.

I chose the chicken and chorizo salad with green beans, new potatoes, sweet peppers and a poached egg. There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment of putting poached eggs with different things. Recently I have had it with salad and in a soup! I am enjoying this trend. I like eggs (despite getting salmonella poisoning in the late 1980s when it was very fashionable!).

The salad was served with some strips of pitta bread, which was great for mopping up the egg yolk.

Kobe seems to be popular for food at lunchtime. The outdoor area was busy and lots of people were eating. Not surprising really – a good bar and nice food!

L’Atelier Etoile de Joel Robuchon, Paris

My first taste of Michelin starred food was at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Las Vegas a few years ago. Since then, I have been on a bit of a mission to visit other Robuchon restaurants, and have so far been to the one in London and Paris St Germain. Last weekend we went to Paris for a few days and managed to tick another one off the list, the recently opened L’Atelier Etoile de Joel Robuchon.

The restaurant was a bit of nightmare to find, at the top of the Champs Elysees but actually within a shop called the Drugstore. Down some steps within the store we came across the typical red and black design of Robuchon restaurants. Inspired by a sushi bar, diners are seated at a long bar around an open-style kitchen, so you can see your food being prepared. Despite not having a reservation, coats were taken and we were shown to some bar stools.



Amuse bouche

 Our pathetically limited French wasn’t too much of a disadvantage as our waiter spoke English and was happy to explain some of the options on the menu. Although there are traditional starters and mains, we decided to go with the tasting dishes – small plates of Robuchon creations!

An amuse bouche was brought out first – a shot glass with a jelly-like substance. I heard the waiter say something about fennel but the rest of the ingredients escaped me. No matter, it was delicious.

The first of my small plates was aubergine soup with a poached egg, mushrooms and small slices of ham. From the picture, you can see a mesh-like decoration in the middle – I am uncertain what this is but it looked good, and tasted good too! Although quite a mixed bag of a dish, all the flavours went well together.

We decided to share our next course. This was “Le Burger” Robuchon-style. The dish was actually split into two plates which was a nice touch. Le Burger is a tiny beef burger, topped with fois gras and bell peppers, in the smallest bun I have ever seen! It came with a side of crinkle cut fries and homemade ketchup. “Better than McDonalds?” the waiter enquired after we had demolished it. Just a bit.

My third and final plate was “La Caille” – quail stuffed with fois gras and the infamous Robuchon mash. I have heard different things about this mash, from it being a third butter to half butter. It is incredibly rich and creamy and you can’t eat much of it. But it is amazing!

We missed out dessert. Despite the portions being small, the food is very rich and it is surprising how full we felt.

The only mistake I made was ordering the wrong wine. I am not much of an expert on French wine, so ordered the cheapest. It was a Columbard/Sauvignon and it was awful. I replaced it with a glass of red because I think it is harder to get an undrinkable red wine.

So another wonderful experience was had at Joel Robuchon. It is not cheap, but then neither is Paris in general so it is well worth a visit. It is not stuffy or formal and we felt we were made very welcome with great service from the various servers. Outstanding.

Carriages, Knaresborough

The regular school friends’ lunch had a twist last Saturday as it was one of our number’s 40th birthday. A surprise lunch out in Knaresborough followed by some embarrassing karaoke in Leeds was planned down to the last minute, with transport generously provided by one of the husbands.* So four ladies and a husband piled into the Zafira and roared off up the A1 with two labradoodles in the back.
Carriages is a lovely cosy restaurant with a comfortable bar area and tables available in a few different rooms. There is a lunch menu and a tapas menu, so we decided to order some tapas and a bottle of Pinot.

Two tapas portions each seemed to be about right, but we also ordered a few extras – patatas bravas, olives and garlic bread.

Scallops and crab were served in a shell. A really generous serving of scallops, considering this was a tapas dish, and presented in a lovely creamy sauce.

I was keen to order the parma ham and quail egg salad and wasn’t disappointed. Tiny fried quail eggs complemented the ham and rocket leaves perfectly.

Cod pieces were served with pancetta and a creamy sauce on the side. 

Other dishes included huge green lipped mussels which were served with a tomato based sauce. A couple of vegetarian dishes were given the thumbs up by the non-carnivore in the group.

After lunch, we retired to the garden for our coffees – a covered area with a view of the valley. It almost felt like summer! The bill was provided promptly so we paid up and went to visit a few other Knaresborough hostelries.

Carriages is great – a lovely setting, great food and pleasant service. The evening menu was on a blackboard and looked wonderful. Maybe next time......

Side note: OK Karaoke in Leeds afterwards was a revelation. A private room, snacks and Pinot were provided and a massive selection of songs was available for us to systematically murder. Brilliant place.


*we are not practicing polygamists, this was H’s husband.

Brio, The Light, Leeds city centre

Brio is great if you are starving. I was starving as I had been up at the crack of dawn and not considered breakfast. So when I arrived at 12pm, I was determined to order a big bowl of pasta. I wasn’t disappointed – the Rigatoni Bolognese was a huge portion and generous on the meat Bolognese sauce. We also shared a side dish of garlic tomato bread which is excellent at Brio – a very thin base which is just how it should be.

Another plus is that they serve tea. I have decided that I don’t like soft drinks – fizzy pop and the like. If I am not on the wine, I would rather drink what I would drink at home – tea or coffee. So far this new plan is going well – the Roundhay Fox made tea for me, as did Brio.

This was a half term lunch with mum, sis and the nieces. Brio is a very family friendly place and lots of families were taking advantage of the children’s menu. It is not somewhere I would go to for a nice evening meal out, but for a hearty lunch during a shopping trip or before a visit to the Light’s cinema, it fits the bill.

My only criticism is that there was a bit of a “held-hostage” moment at the end. This is a Leeds Food Leads pet peeve. Despite mum practically waving the bill and her card in the air, and me pointedly standing up and putting my coat on, it took a while for someone to arrive and let us pay. Who knew it was so hard to part with your cash in Leeds?

Fazenda Rodizio Bar and Grill, Leeds city centre

After a few drinks in The Hop, we had a table booked at Fazenda for an early dinner on Saturday. On the website it says “a unique dining experience - we are proud to bring you all the tradition behind the unique and original Brazilian way of serving meat”. Walking through the doors, we were invited to have a drink at the bar before being shown to our table. Fazenda serves a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio.

We were seated in a booth, where we were told about the “Fazenda experience”. Basically, you get a card rather like a beer mat that is red on one side, green on the other. When you want meat, you turn the card to green and a server arrives with a large skewer of meat and proceeds to cut some off. Each diner is given a pair of tongs for taking the meat from the server. All sorts of choices appear - rump steak, ribs, lamb, pork, chicken and some salmon served from a trolley. When you want the meat to stop coming, you turn the card to red.

In addition to all this meat, there is a buffet with a huge choice of salads, including cous cous, coleslaw and potato. There are quite a few appetizer items as well, including sushi rolls (which I was not expecting but was very pleased to see!) The servers also brought other sides to the table including chips, cheese bread and empanadas.


The buffet!


For pudding, R had the Toffee pancakes, which looked great.

The place became busy pretty quickly, even though it was still early. I believe this would be a great place to go in a large group, as you would avoid the problem of waiting for everyone to be served, while your food goes cold, which seems to happen in some restaurants.

The Fazenda eating experience is not really me, though. I think I am a bit underwhelmed with buffets, as I have had my fill of those on our many trips to Vegas. I am also not a massive meat-eater. I eat meat often, but my eyes are never automatically drawn to steaks on a normal menu, and I don’t believe that lots of meat makes a meal that memorable.

In addition, I found it quite interesting that certain meats were coming thick and fast to the table, but there was no filet mignon to be seen, despite it being on the menu. After a few visits to our table with other meats, one of the servers quite abruptly asked us what we were waiting for. We said the filet, and finally it arrived.

Despite this, I am glad we went and tried it – I had seen it reviewed in a few places and it sounded like an interesting experience. It is definitely suitable for a more committed carnivore than for me.

Roundhay Fox, Roundhay, Leeds

Back to the Roundhay Fox for lunch last Saturday. Not as busy as a Sunday and so we easily got a table for six adults and two children. A and I shared a pot of tea in the bar while we waited for our dining companions and we were all shown to a table quickly when they arrived.
The menu is extensive and so I spent ages trying to decide. They have a set menu with a number of choices on for £8 for two courses, £10 for three, which is really good value. I decided to choose from the main menu though and settled for the sesame chicken starter that I had last time!

For main, I ordered homemade haddock fishcakes, which came with chips, side salad and a herb mayonnaise. The fishcakes were full of fish and very pleasant. Presentation is excellent.

I couldn’t manage a pudding, but SH ordered the Banoffee Cheesecake which looked amazing.

I am impressed with the Roundhay Fox. Second visit and still great. A step up from basic pub food in a really nice atmosphere.