Finding my vocation

It wouldn't be our biannual trip to Leeds without a trip into town before we go home. As it was our December visit - for Christmas Number One - we also decided to involve some festive shopping. Theoretically that means a few hours happily browsing, while picking up the perfect gifts for all our friends and family. In reality that means bickering our way around two shops, max, followed by a row because it's been at least two hours since breakfast.

This trip was surprisingly peaceful - apart from a disagreement about which way to go beside a giant illuminated reindeer, which I'm blaming firmly on Google Maps - although I was exceedingly happy when my Uncle John called while were we in Lush, meaning I could duck outside to escape the eye-watering aroma of patchouli and despair. Even better he told us he was also in town, and did we want to meet for lunch.

Of course we wanted to meet for lunch. And where better than the very recently opened Assembly Underground, located on the previous site of the former Leeds School Board building on Calverley Street (as I was reliably informed by my Uncle). Run by Hebden Bridge's Vocation Brewery it features fifty taps of beer, a hidden cocktail bar and an open dining hall area featuring grub from Slap & Pickle, Felafel Guys, Punjabi street curry specialist Jah Jyot, Leodis Coffee, and Bread and Butter Churrasco BBQ.

Uncle John went for a classic pint of  what I *think* was Vocation's Heart and Soul on cask (I was somewhat distracted at the time, trawling through the vast beer menu myself). Whatever it was, look at it - all things bright and beautiful, glittering in the afternoon winter sun. He nearly managed a second pint, but a queue at the bar saw him fall back on plan b; a very nice looking flat white from Underground Coffee.

Somewhat overwhelmed with choice, I asked the barman for some 'murk' and was rewarded with a schooner of Vocation's Where's Dan, a delicious, opaque NEIPA that tasted, and looked, like hoppy pineapple Just Juice.  The Ewing, our designated driver, also went fruity with a half of the Vocation agave and lime radler. 

I hadn't already had a surfeit of red meat on my visit - with roast sirloin of beef for Christmas Dinner Number One, followed by a game pie at the House of Trembling Madness the day after - I decided to complete the hat trick with a big ass burger at Slap and Pickle.

I went for the light option with the Baconator and a side of Big Mick's fries. The burger - double cheese, double bacon, double beef, iceberg and burger sauce - was one of the best I've had this year. Salty, oozy, greasy, drippy, just like all the best things in life.

The loaded fries, as you can probably tell from the name, riffed on a popular burger chain's popular eponymous burger and came topped with burger crumble, cheese sauce, burger sauce, mustard, lettuce and pickles. Eat 'em while they're hot for maximum pleasure, although I do secretly love the odd cold and congealed chip that gets welded to the bottom of the dish.

My Uncle and the Ewing went for a bit of spice from Jah Jyot, Punjabi inspired Indian street food traders who have ended up in West Yorkshire via Horsham in West Sussex. Alongside curries and thalis they also offer a range of filled dosas, samosas and tikka wraps made with fenugreek chappatis.

Both chose a selection of curries including the Amritsar chicken with potato and fresh coriander and a vegan ajma (red kidney bean) curry with fenugreek seeds, which was excellent. Alongside were rice and the aforementioned chapattis, flecked green with the aromatic leaves.

Of course a trip into town wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Kirkgate market for provisions before the long schlep home -  which on this occasion included ten sirloins for a tenner and over three kilos of limes for two quid. having said that, I skipped the arseholes and tripe. My wife says that's the standard of my drunken Christmas conversation already...

Lunch on the Water

I’m generally a pretty accepting sort of a person but there are a few things I remain distrustful of; when my wife says she's 'nearly ready', the arrival boards in First Wessex bus shelters, and bars/restaurants who offer both pizzas and burgers on their menu.

Despite being two of my very favourite foodstuffs, when you see them united you know one is almost definitely going to suck; maybe (probably) both. While it’s usually the pizza that's the first casualty - such a simple thing, but so hard to get right without the (costly) kit – bad burgers are also grimly familiar.

One place that has successfully managed it is the Belgrave in Leeds, but that’s because they have a pizza concession from Dough Boys at the front and burgers from the Patty Smith’s Burger Co. at the back, meaning you can mix and match from two specialists; which is cheating, really, but great if you fancy a slice with some fries on the side.

The Belgrave also serve a wide selection of Very Nice beer, so it’s pretty hard to be persuaded to try other places for lunch. That's until I saw that the team behind them had a latest venture - Water Lane Boat Lane, down by the docks - that also kept a handsomely stocked bar, and were offering a menu of both pizza and burgers. Perfect for the hungry, thirsty and the undecided.

Even though the brewery is just around the corner, and we had our customary visit scheduled for the following day, I couldn't turn down a half of the Blueberry and Mosaic black IPA, from the Northern Monk Patrons Project.

I'm not always convinced by BIPA - is it a stout or is it a pale ale? - but I really enjoyed the balance of the fruitiness from the berries with the herbal funk of the hops and the bitter edge of the roasted malt. At a hefty 7%, it's a sipper, not a slurper, but, not to give too much away in the first few paragraphs, I liked it (and the food) so much I came back for another half the very next day.

Their pizza dough is made using just three ingredients: organic Yorkshire flour, water and salt. A promising start, but pretty much all you can put in a pizza dough, to be fair. More excitingly, after slow proving for twenty four hours, their pies are cooked in their Small Victories brick oven, handmade in Naples and shipped to these shores. And, best of all, they are buy one get one for a quid on Sundays and Mondays. 

They also offer interesting, but not too outlandish, flavour combos such as prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella and pickled radicchio that I split with the Ewing. This is my kinda pizza; a puffy cornicione; blistered from the heat of the oven; a pleasingly chewy slightly sour base; and just enough toppings to keep things interesting without overwhelming the dish's inherent simplicity (or giving it a soggy bottom).

We also shared the ox cheek with horseradish, san marzano tomatoes and mozarella, which was the Ewing's preferred pie. Combining rich chunks of meat, like the best beef stew, with zippy horseraduish, sweet tomatoes and melty pools of milky cheese, it was another fine example of how simple, yet majestic, a good pizza can be. 

My cousins, who had come to meet us in a break between festive shopping, also enjoyed the classic margarita - the benchmark to which discerning diner Georgia approved; the salami and cured pepperoni; and the kale, pecorino, black olive and truffle oil; which sounded virtuous, but had two types of cheese to make up for it.

As I may have already revealed, we liked it so much that we went back the very next day. Prompted by the prospect of more blueberry beer and the fact that Tuesdays are buy one burger, get one for a pound. Time for the litmus test; could they pull off the double?

As with the day before, we attempted the 'sharing' thing, stating with the Small Victories’ burger - an aged Yorkshire beef patty, cheese, toasted sesame bun, bacon jam, tomato, lettuce, pickles, and Small Victories burger sauce. In a saturated market this was a competent, if unremarkable effort.

Surprisingly, the standout was the veggie option; a beetroot, white bean and fennel patty on a toasted sesame bun, with tomato jam, pickles, burger sauce and salad. While I was worried it sounded rather worthy, it reminded me a bit of the Indian vada pav - a fried spiced potato fritter served in a bun, and one of my favourite Indian snacks. This was possibly even better - gently spiced, earthy, sweet and crisp. To paraphrase the Ewing, a bit of a taste sensation. 

With the sun reflecting on the Leeds and Liverpool shipping canal outside the window, I reflected on how a decent pizza/burger double - with a great beer and keen service - really is possible. I'm still working on expectations when it comes to how long it's going to take for my wife to finish getting ready. (I'm still working on expectations of when you will be able to find your own things - TE).

Thai Aroy Dee

For me, good Thai food should be vibrant with heat and smoke, punchy with the sourness of lime and gently humming with shrimp paste and fish sauce. Which is why it's often so disappointing out of its natural habitat - relegated to bland pub curries; sugary supermarket stir fries; or, possibly worst of all, served in micro portions, in overwrought surroundings, adorned by carved vegetables.

The good people of West Yorkshire, however, seem to have lucked out, with several notable places to get good South East Asian food in Leeds, including the funky Zaap Thai - with it's mix of crowd pleasers and unusual street snacks that made the Ewing cry - and the stylish stalwart Sukothai - with it's slowly burgeoning mini empire.

Thai Aroy Dee - looking more like a mattress salerooms than a restaurant, despite the fairy lights strung out in the windows - might not have either the excitement or charm of the previous picks, but it was always rated highly and was always somewhere I had hoped to squeeze in a visit, at least until their lease ran out on their original spot on Vicar Lane, and they were forced to close unexpectedly.

Fortuitously, another spot became available just down the street, which is, even more fortuitously just adjacent to the car park the Ewing and I park in on our customary last trip into town (to stock up on fish, meat and veg from the Kirkgate Market) after visiting my Aunt and Uncle.

Unusually, the place is licenced but also offers free BYO - Tall Boys Beer Market is just over the road in Thorntons Arcade if you fancy a beer - but, being early on a Tuesday lunchtime and with the long slog back down the M1 awaiting us, we stuck to the soft drinks.

Not a hardship here, where you can pick from exotic sounding beverages such as 'pink cold milk' and 'iced milk green tea' or drinks flavoured with pandan or longdan. I chose the rather more prosaic roasted coconut water, with a extra thick straw to suck up the chunks of the fruit; while the Ewing went for an eye-opening Thai iced coffee with condensed milk and tamarind seeds.

I find it hard to not to order som tum if it's on the menu - the famous green Papaya salad mixed with dried shrimps, carrots, fine beans, fresh chillies, garlic, lime juice, tomatoes, fish sauce and ground peanuts. Here it's served alongside gai yang - crisp and smoky grilled chicken with a hefty punch of spice - improving it even further.

Pad Kee Mao, or 'drunken' rice noodles, with pork, turned out to be flatter than the noodles - the only misstep of the whole meal. While it was generously portioned and packed with a pleasing squeak from the green beans and white cabbage, it missed the advertised punch of the chilli and holy basil. In fact, it seemed to be missing any seasoning at all, something an extra splash of Squid fish sauce some what ameliorated.

In contrast the duck curry with pineapple, cherry tomatoes, pea aubergine and squash, was exemplary. The duck was sweet and tender and the sauce redolent with coconut and fragrant spice, punctuated with bursts of tangy tropical fruit. Alongside was a basket of steamed sticky rice, my favourite kind of rice (or at least on par with Ambrosia, straight from the tin).

The Ewing has a deep and endearing love of prawn crackers and is always insistent we order some; not really a hardship. Despite them forgetting to bring them out until we'd almost finished eating, these were fine examples although, curiously, there were also a few of the more familiar chinese-style interlopers amongst the darker, crisper thai crackers. 

While it might not have the tuk-tuks of Zaap or the ornate carvings of Sukhotai, Aroy Dee (delicious, in Thai) does exactly what it says on the tin. And only thirty quid all in for more food than even we could manage - they also do a two course lunch menu for £6.95 - it also meant we had a bonus bag of prawn crackers to sustain us on the drive back down the M1.

Will and Vics

Until this year Harrogate has consistently topped the poll of the happiest place to live in in the UK, a crown recently stolen by the cheeky Essex charmer, Leigh-on-Sea. Having visited both in the last twelve months and enjoyed, respectively, a Fat Rascal at Betty’s and pints of prawns and a beer down at the cockle sheds, I say it’s pretty much a dead heat. Although you can eat a Rossi’s whippy on the seafront in Leigh, which may just nudge them ahead.

One advantage that Harrogate holds is its proximity to my Aunt and Uncle’s house, making it the perfect place for us Ladies wot Lunch to visit for a refined stroll around the Valley Gardens before luncheon at stalwart on the restaurant scene, Will and Vics.

Downstairs is a curious mix half-olde worldy wine bar and half airy bistro, with a posher dining area upstairs. Popular, even on a Monday lunchtime, there was nearly no room at the inn, and we were tucked away in the cosy alcove just off the bar.

While warm and welcoming, it was also rather worrying that every conceivable surface seemed to be covered in excerpts of the menu - from 'British tapas' to a roster of daily specials. While I can see the potential for spontaneous enticement as you're enjoying a drink, even I found it exhausting to be bombarded with such a huge array of strange-sounding snacks as we were waiting to be seated.

Thankfully they also offer a simple set luch menu (with a slightly amended prix fixe for later in the evening) with two courses for an eminently reasonable ten quid - although, slightly strangely, to add a third course from said was an extra seven pounds.

Bread was the soft, sweet malty stuff that my Mum used to buy warm from the new-fangled in-store bakery at the supermarket (really feeling my age now), and that I used to eat slathered thickly with butter for breakfast as a treat. Fast forward a couple of decades and it still had the same nostalgic appeal.

Fish and chips – haddock, obvs, as we were north of the Watford Gap – was served in Whitby Whaler sized-portions and came with mushy peas and some excellent homemade tartare sauce. If I was being ultra-fussy the posh vinegar missed the point of an abrasive slosh of Sarsons, but luckily ketchup seems to taste the same, whether its out of a ramekin or squeezy bottle.

My Uncle also chose the fish, and  we decided a pint of something cold and creamy was in order to help wash it down. The Theakstons Pale ale - a keg beer, based on their bottled pale ale of the 80’s, and brewed locally in Masham - proved just the ticket.

On first appearances I feared the Ewing’s chicken Milanese appeared a little dry, I had also breezily assured her it was going to be served with frites, rather than ‘fat chips’. Fortuitously both poultry and fried potatoes were very well received, the chicken in particular being excellent; hot, juicy and crisp while being a slightly sad reminder that it’s a dish not seen on more menus.

Of all the puddings, summer fruit pudding must rank right up there. Sadly, like rice pudding - which is also firmly in my top five - it's seldom seen on restaurant menus.  Seemingly the idea of combining stale bread and desert seems to divide and conquer, although I don't rate it nearly as highly when made with sponge cake. 

Thankfully this was properly constructed from white sliced (no pale bits showing through the carapace) and a perfect example of squidgy summeriness, stuffed with tart fruit and topped with a quenelle of Stamfrey Farm clotted cream.

The Ewing's coconut panna cotta served with a mango compote was equally summery and also very good. The panna cotta itself was clean and refreshing - although set rather like a Trump Jr comb-over than a wobbly like a Titian nude - and the mango, one of my favourite fruits, fragrant and tangy.

My aunt, not a pud fan, chose the lemon curd cheese cake to share, and promptly scoffed the physalis on top, before asking if i wanted to capture a picture of it for posterity for the blog. Here she is after replacing the papery skin on top and assuring me any eagle-eyed readers would hardly notice...

Of course, she may just have been happy to live near Harrogate; If I had Will and Vics just down the road I’d be very happy to live here too.

House of the Trembling Madness

York is a city that is positively stuffed with history (alongside a surfeit of fudge shops) and the House of the Trembling Madness - tucked away on Stonegate, as you head towards the Minster - is no exception. The rear of the building dates back to 1180 AD, the first Norman house built in York, while the medieval hall upstairs is still traversed with original ships beams that would have set sail on the seas all those centuries ago.

All which makes for a wonderfully quirky interior, with the added bonus of the uneven floors and low door frames that make you feel a little tipsy before you've imbibed a drop - the place is named after the Delirium Tremens after all. Hit your head on the aforementioned beams and you could also wake up feeling like you've got a hangover.

The pub part of the operation is on the first floor - the aforementioned medieval hall and a marvellous room with a vaulted ceiling, ornate candelabra and a wall full of stuffed animal heads. The whole effect bought to mind the kind of place Henry VIII might hang out for a casual tankards of mead, when he wasn’t hosting lavish jousting tournaments or executing his wives. The sheepskin rugs on the chairs and Christmas soundtrack also contributed to the warming feeling of Hygge. Although, retrospectively, that could have also been the brandy in the mulled wine.

In our customary eagerness, we were the first through the doors for our late breakfast/early lunch. And, as even I had to concede, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas, I started with a pint of the Fairytale of Brew York from the selection of cask beers on the bar. Beers from the shop may be drunk upstairs for an additional £1.25 corkage fee per bottle. 

The Ewing went with the mulled wine, and while it wasn't quite up to the standard of my Aunt's at the panto the day before (she's an expert muller), it was still commendable - as well as being pretty lethal at half eleven in the morning. If you fancy something even stronger check out their beer shots which range from Brewdog's Tactical Nuclear Penguin at 32% right up to The Mystery of Beer, brewed by Dutch brewers 'T Koelschip, and weighing in at a hefty 70%.

Their menu states 'we believe that you should be able to eat food whenever you are hungry or need it, so we have a policy of whenever the pub is open then the food is always available to you'. A nice touch, although beware if you fancy an early pie, as we did, as you may have to wait for your gravy to warm up.

The food, expertly prepared in the tiny galley kitchen that also doubles as the bar, mostly focuses on platters of cold meats, pate and cheese, with a couple of different incarnations of the beef burger (although no chips) and a few hot dishes that can be served with mash (pies, sausages and a daily-changing stew).

The festive salmon platter was a gargantuan array of grub for a mere £6.50. More importantly, it was excellent; hot toast, cold butter, punchy pate with ribbons of smoked fish and capers studded throughout, a dab of dill mustard and a pickled chilli chaser. The homemade House of Madness slaw rounded things off - providing crisp respite from the full on flavours.

The Ewing picked the booze-inspired cheese platter, with wedges infused with Yorkshire whisky, Yorkshire beer hops and Drunken Burt's cider, alongside a Wellington blue and Green Thunder garlic and herb, all accompanied by bread from the Via Vecchia bakery, on the nearby Shambles.

Generous and delicious, although, if I had a criticism, the different flavours soon became pretty indistinguishable. Still, large amounts of cheese and crusty bread with a bunch of redcurrants thrown in for good measure. You can't really go too wrong with that.

I also had to have the steak pie and pea 'tapas', served with a jug of beer and onion gravy A kind of reverse Peter Mandelson with his mushy pea guacamole. If you could find this kinda stuff on the bars of pubs the way you find ham and omelettes in Spain I'd be a happy (and even fatter) girl.

Just in case we weren't already on course for for a seasonal dose of gout, we decided we couldn't miss the Swaledale sausage ring, infused with 7% Yorkshire imperial stout and served on a floury bap, from the breakfast/early lunchtime menu. A very wise choice, especially with lashings of butter and a blob of dill mustard. 

Going back downstairs after lunch  bought to mind the tale of when Pooh goes visiting at Rabbit's House, eats all the honey and promptly gets stuck in the doorway. Thankfully we could still squeeze through to fill our basket from an aladdin's cave of, (very well priced) beers that include a large range of Sam Smiths, from nearby Tadcaster, alongside hard to find local beers, Belgian classics, and American hop bombs There was even a collaboration stout, Descent Into Madness, brewed with the Bad Seed Brewery in Malton.

Down in the basement there is even more booze, with a variable assortment of spirits including gin, whisky, bourbon and a shelf full of the kind of lurid drinks you bring back from two weeks abroad and leave to gather dust on the sideboard for the next decade. There is also a whole case dedicated to the green fairy, absinthe, whose mythical properties were thought to cause many imbibers to hallucinate - although this was more likely caused by withdrawal symptoms from acute alcohol dependency than from the liquor itself.

Oscar Wilde said of the green stuff; 'after the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world'. Unless you're tucked up upstairs, pint in hand and a plate of bread and meat in front of you. Then things look pretty good.