A Leeds Diary, December 22--31, 2024

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This was the spectacular sea bass pae-sa at Thai A Roy Dee (120-122 Vicar Ln) that @Nangbarou pointed to on another thread

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We had the sea bass (£15.95) at lunch on Monday, December 23, our first full day in Leeds. What a great way to start a trip! In subsequent days we were to have some superb meals, but this dish remained one of the knockouts: the edges of the fish above the broth crisp, and the broth itself satisfyingly hot and sour, and loaded with vegetables. The cauliflower florets were particularly good, absorbing the sauce as they did. So did the submerged, meatier parts of the fish. Jasmine rice was a perfect accompaniment. We also had chicken tom yum with noodles (£8.95) , also hot and sour, but with a different profile from the fish (a mellower sourness, from a touch of coconut), and for textural contrast some chicken toast (£4.95):

ThaiADeeChxToast

By current US standards the prices at this meal (and at every meal in Leeds) were extremely reasonable (at roughly $1.3 to £1). We drank water and a couple of canned FOCO drinks, of which this one was particularly good (it had essentially no additives and a fresh, clean not-too-sweet taste):

ThaiADeeCocoDrink

Another type, mangosteen, was just flavored sugar-water. FOCO is an international company headquartered in Thailand. Their drinks are available in the U.S. (where I’m based), and I looked for this one (with roasted coconut) on my return. I could only find regular coconut water, with tinier bits of coconut, lots of sugar and stabilizers, and an unpleasantly chemical taste.

This lunch was one of the best meals we’d had in recent years (and one of four spectacular ones we were to have on our visit). So thrilled were we by the food that we ordered delivery from them to our hotel the very next night. We wanted drier dishes and got pad see ew with tofu (£8.95) – only so-so, and perhaps we deserved that for making such a conventional choice; prawn and vegetable tempura (£5.95) – very doughy, again getting what we deserved for choosing tempura at a Thai restaurant; crispy and spicy pork ribs (£5.95); coconut rice (£2.95); and pad kinge with beef and a robust gingery kick (£8.95). The last three made the meal, but it was overall a slight letdown from lunch at the restaurant the previous day – our fault entirely for “ordering wrong”. The morning glory dish that @Nangbarou had recommended had eluded me on our in-person visit. I spotted it on the delivery menu, but stupidly didn’t get it. More on that in the December 30 post to follow.

The restaurant is on a stretch of Vicar Lane, in a section of town that has many Thai, or Thai-adjacent establishments. There’s Zaap Street Foods (more on them later) across Vicar Ln, and Mommy Thai next door. Not quite at the extreme level of the stretch of 9th Ave in NYC around the 40s where you can’t spit without hitting a Thai restaurant, but a similar vibe on a smaller scale (and Vicar Ln is a nicer-looking street than 9th Ave, although that doesn’t take much):

Zaap

Mommy

And there are markets

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A few general comments about our visit: This was a reunion, the reason for which was to celebrate the birth of a baby to a couple that lives in Leeds. I’ll refer to them as MN. They like their food, and had independently suggested some of the same places that @Nangbarou had (Thai A Roy Dee, the Brunswick, Trissur Pooram, among others). In our eating in town we were guided by @Nangbarou’s advice (OP of the thread linked to above, plus this post further down, theirs, and some independent digging I did. Our party was diverse: apart from us Boston-Cantabrigians, and the Leeds group, there were people from Czechia, India, and the nation of Birmingham. We like to eat. One member of the party is a professional foodista, the head baker at an upscale Bombay bakery. (They continued to supervise operations in Bombay via video from Leeds.) We didn’t do everything together, often splitting into subgroups. I’ll comment mostly on my experiences and on what touched my own tongue. I’ll also try and make each post food-topward, so that that those interested just in food need only read the tops of my subsequent posts and ignore the ramblings below them.

Our visit was to have begun with a group Sunday roast (December 22) at the Lamb and Flag, a pub in town (more about it later). But bad weather in Boston, followed by more bad weather in Dublin, followed by a further incident, meant that my wife and I missed it. Reviews from the others on the meal were mixed. Some found it bland, but MN said it was very meaty.

After our Thai lunch on the 23rd, my wife and I met several others from our party at the Leeds Kirkgate Market, one entrance to which is a short, pleasant walk down Vicar Ln from the Thai restaurant. The market deserves its own post.

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The Leeds Kirkgate Market (December 23rd & 30th)

Wikipedia tells us that it’s the largest covered market in Europe, but the Leeds City Council more modestly says it’s “One of the largest”, adding that it’s “a shopper’s paradise from fresh food, drink and fashion to jewellery, flowers, hardware and haberdashery.” I can’t speak to the jewelry or the haberdashery or the fashion, but the food parts were fascinating. There’s a main food court, but there are stalls/stores selling food dotted all over, often in unexpected places. I only scratched the surface. (This thread started by @Kake has more information on the market.)

@Nangbaorou had recommended Saeeda. It’s on row F, stall #411, closish to the end where the covered market leads to a smaller open one

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Sadly, though, they were out of food on our first visit, and this is what we encountered on our second:

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Next time.

On our first visit, some members of the party shared jerk chicken and fish& chips from two of the stalls in the main food court, both of which they liked. My wife tasted them both and liked them too. I was too preoccupied to eat – I was trying to find an ATM (having forgotten to at the airport the day before); plus it was just an hour after our huge lunch. On the second visit our companions had Colombian empanadas as well as Jamaican patties (lamb, and salt fish – the latter a bit soggy, based on my bite) from places elsewhere in the market than the main food court. My wife and I had sandwiches that day from Mr. Mackerel in the main court – a very tasty grilled chicken with a spicy rub, and, of course, grilled mackerel. You can choose from a wide variety of add-ons. I picked shredded red cabbage, thin slivers of onion, tomato, and mayo for the chicken, and cucumber&yoghgurt, onion, jalapenos, hot sauce, and garlic sauce for the fish.

Here are some pictures of the market as you enter from Vicar Ln:

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The clock in the last picture commemorates where, I gather, Marks & Spencer first started as a penny store in the late 1800s:

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The market has to be visited to be believed. Here’s some of the fish:

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And a close-up of one of those suckers:

There’s also meat, veggies, etc. Here are small samples:

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The prices were very good – 5 tangerines for £2, for example, although the quality was not as good as at fancy places in the Boston area, such as Formaggio Kitchen (there, 2 for $5 – but those stay healthy for three weeks, while the ones here collapsed in three days). One cannot, of course, live by fish, yams and tangerines alone. One needs cheese (although, sadly, this was not a sample; it was the totality):

KirklandCheese

The item in the black wax at the lower left turned out to be a charcoal-infused cheese, a Yorkshire specialty (look it up). It was gritty but surprisingly good. We also got some excellent Yorkshire butter from them. MN recommended their jams and preserves, but we didn’t get any.

One also needs bread, and dessert. The Karpaty Bakery stall hit the spot:

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A little digging reveals that they are part of a chain. (http://karpatybakery.co.uk/) Nevertheless, we liked their dense rye breads, their doughnut with rose jam, their sweet poppyseed bread, and their pavlova:

Karpaty_Pavlova

Finally, here’s the kind of stall you find just (apparently) randomly stuck in the market, this one across from a florist:

What a place this market is!

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Tuesday, December 24

Five of us (I include the newborn) lunched at an Italian restaurant, San Carlo (6-7 S Parade). It’s part of a mini-chain, but got a grudgingly good review from the Guardian’s Jay Rayner. Following his advice, we started with the frittura di pesce Portofino for two (aka fritto misto – see pricing later), and excellent – but tiny – arancini with shaved black truffles (£9.95) sitting in a saffron sauce so good that we ordered bread to mop it up (£6.50 – it came toasted, with olive and pepper spreads on the side). For mains we had spaghetti carbonara (half portion, £10.50), lamb meatballs on casarecce with red sauce (£19.75), pizza diavola (£16.95), and risotto wrapped in prosciutto (£17.75), the only dish we photographed:

SanCarloRisotto

I thought the risotto less creamy than ideal, and the sauce on my casarecce gloppy, but overall the food was very good

We also had some beer, mocktails (excellent), and suchlike. It’s an elegant restaurant – white tablecloths, nice flowers – and the staff were very kind (baby-pram, mobility-walker – no problem) and better-dressed than we were, if occasionally disengaged. But I did have a quibble with the fried seafood. It’s listed “for two” on the menu, and Rayner says “it was so large, so volumous, that I became suspicious I had been rumbled … Then I saw exactly the same dish being heaved on to another table – a pile of golden, lightly battered king prawns, knotted squid tentacles and sizable scallops, leaving the plate almost greaseless - and I realised this was just the way they do things here … it’s £17.70.” Our dish was also voluminous (although priced at £17.95 on the menu now), but there were just two prawns, four small scallops, and the rest of the big dish squid. It was all expertly, greaselessly fried, and very tasty. When the bill came, however, we were charged £35.90 on the grounds that we were served a 2 X 2 portion, not the standard “for two”. It was hard to see how two prawns were meant to serve four, but it was also hard to argue the point at the end of the meal after the dish had long been demolished. It had otherwise been a wonderful afternoon, and they had let us linger and talk. I didn’t want to spoil it by arguing, so I coughed up the cash.

After lunch, as the light was fading (at 3 pm) we walked to a Christmas fair at the center of town (Millenium Square):

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There was a fudge stall with a vast array, including the only fudge I consider worth eating, Scottish tablet. I got some for later, and a Jamaican-inflected mince pie bathed in rum-cream for there-and-then.

Back at our hotel that night, we had delivery from Thai A Roy Dee, as described above. We’d wanted to try Zaap Street Foods for comparison, but they don’t deliver on busy evenings and this was one. (See December 30 and 31 posts below.)

We’d been San Carlo at lunch that day because of its close proximity to the Leeds Art Gallery (address simply “The Headrow”, rather as mine is simply “The Earth”). We were there before our long, leisurely lunch. It was Christmas Eve. They were barely open, and their lovely Tiled Hall Café not open at all for food (but you could walk around). Still it was an interesting morning. There’s a fascinating 19th century room with war paintings:

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and the detritus of imperialism:

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Britannia is shown here teaching the savage tiger of India a lesson after said savage has attacked innocent women and children. The title? Retribution. (Some bad ideas, sadly, never seem to go away.)

But there was also a very good exhibit of sketches by Curtis Holder, a recent artist-in-residence there. He sketched people as they looked at art in the museum, and he talked to them. The exhibit has his rough sketches in one room, then finished drawings of his eight main “sitters”, along with an account of the particular piece of art in the museum they were looking at when being sketched. The whole process was interactive, not just subjects sitting passively for the artist. The show ends with a video of Holder talking with the people he drew. Here’s one of the people he sketched (Saba Siddiqui), with a snippet on the right of the “Tempest Walker”, the work she was looking at when sketched.

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Really enjoying these reports, both the writing and the photos, thanks! And please keep them coming!!

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Wednesday, December 25

Dinner on Christmas Day was at Ma-Hé Coastal Indian (59 Wade Ln), a newish restaurant that gets decent press. Its chief virtue for us initially was that they’d accommodate our party for dinner. Most other places were either closed that day, or fully booked. Happily, the food turned out to be spectacular – our second great meal in Leeds. We each ordered the 3-course Christmas dinner:

and between us got pretty much everything on it. Of the dishes I tried, the beef pepper dry, prawn wontons, meen varuval, and crispy okra were outstanding starters, and the lamb masala, prawn curry, and chicken curry equally superb main courses. The portions were huge. Were we better, more restrained people, we’d have stopped at the appetizers. But we moved on from those with gusto to the mains. The only slight let down was the chicken biryani, more a pulao really. The ghee rice, parottas and kal dosa were great sides. Of the dessert, two from their regular menu (they let us pick from there as well), the saffrony rava and their plantain pancakes proved better than the ones on the special menu. We liked the food enough that we ordered delivery from them at our hotel three days later: lamb masala (£15.50), prawn curry (£14.50), parottas and kal dosas (£3.50 each for two of each), and rava (£5.50). The food didn’t quite sing to us this time, but it was still excellent.

The dinner came after another day of wandering around. Some of us went that morning to a local church with a long history, Leeds Minster (2-6 Kirkgate). Wikipedia tells us that the ministers there go back to Hugo (1220), Alanus de Shirburn (1242), and Johannes de Feversham (1250). We were there to listen to the Christmas music (personally, I believe in nothing, except in celebrating everything), and especially their famous organ

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After that we wandered off to the Lamb and Flag (1 Church Row) right next door (the clergywoman who’d delivered the homily/sermon was also there, tossing back a pint, so we knew were on god’s own turf)

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and had some excellent mulled wine (delicate notes of cinnamon and orange). They were only serving pre-booked Christmas meals, so we consoled ourselves with these:

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After this, we walked around town for a bit. It was eerie because everything was closed – restaurants, bars, even convenience stores – and the streets deserted. We knew we had a big dinner ahead at Ma He, but still needed something to carry us through from breakfast till then. We hunger easily. Eventually, we settled on rye bread (from Karpaty at the Leeds Market two days earlier) and butter in our hotel room at 1. At 3, a few of us met in the hotel lobby and polished off two bottles of Prosecco (there was a 24-hour bar in the hotel) along with cheese from the Market. Thus fortified we sallied to dinner at Ma-Hé.

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Thursday, December 26

After a late morning a bunch of us went to Roundhay Park (Mansion Ln, Roundhay), some by cab others by bus. The park has a lovely lake with a café perched at one edge. We had sandwiches (turkey, ham, beef) that ranged from OK to marginal, and some better sweets. Here are the coffee-walnut and chocolate cake slices:

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Despite the cutesy decoration on the chocolate cake, my wife said it was very good, with an intense chocolate flavor. In the background of that cake you see the one scone they had left. I also had a decent mince pie. We had mulled wine here as well (seems that’s the drink of the season) – it was good, but we preferred the one at the Lamb and Flag.

After lunch we walked partway around the lake. It was muddy, but lovely:

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On the way to the lake (and back) our taxi took us along Roundhay road. I noticed three of @Nangbarou’s recommendations close to each other on a stretch filled with places to eat: Piassa (Ethiopian, 83 Roundhay), Mazar (Afghani, 227), and Darvish (Persian, 283). That put us in the mood when we were back at the hotel. Piassa does not seem to deliver, and Darvish took an order, then canceled it. So it was Mazar, and it was a very good meal. We ordered lentil soup (£2), mantu (£7.50), felafel (£5.49, from their “Arabic” section), lamb charsi karahi (£15.49) with rice (£5), fried fish (£8), reta (£2), and afghani naan. This last is listed as £1.70 on their website, and it was excellent, but we were not charged. Other prices were a little unusual too: some items were priced 50p higher for delivery than for take-out – not uncommon – but others were priced lower – very uncommon. The food was overall very good, but it suffered from comparison with the extraordinary meal at Ma-Hé the night before. The lamb at Ma-Hé had been succulent and tender, the lamb from Mazar a little less so (although on par with our second, delivery experience from Ma-Hé two days later).

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Friday, December 27

We packed breakfast at the hotel (scrambled eggs, bacon and suchlike between slices of buttered toast), then took an ill-fated day trip to Birmingham. We’d had food plans there – including afternoon tea near the fabled Venice-like Birmingham canals – but it turned out the trains were running poorly because track/signal work (“engineering works”, as they call them) scheduled over Christmas had not been completed. Several trains were canceled that day. Ours was not (although there was an unexpected and poorly announced last-minute track change – I felt that I could have been taking the Long Island Rail Road), but it would have been better if it had. We left the new track late, inched along, and were 2 ½ hours late on a 2-hour trip. (They did make several apologetic announcements on the train about how “rubbish” it all was.) After a nice lunch with the people we were visiting – they kindly produced a Christmas pudding for me – we found that many evening trains back were canceled, including ours. We scrambled to find an alternative, and eventually had to Uber back to Leeds at a significant cost. I filed for refunds on both the very delayed morning trip and the canceled evening one. They said I’d get a decision in three weeks. But just 11 days later, at 5:17 this morning (Jan 9), I got an email saying that my refunds had been approved. This was mitigated by an email at 2:30 pm saying that they’d had a large number of claims, apologizing for the delay, and saying they’d get to mine as soon as they could.

On the plus side of the trip, the ride was smooth, the train clean, and the seats comfortable. This was true of all our train rides. The Leeds station is large and sprawling, but there are clear signs everywhere and an easy-to-find central information booth. Those of you in my normal neck of the woods who’ve had to ride Amtrak, or worse, commuter trains out of either Boston or NY will know what a blessing this is.

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Saturday, December 28

Dinner today was the delivery to our hotel from Ma-Hé, discussed above in the entry for the 25th.

Lunch was a respectable smash-burger with crispish edges and decent fries (£11.95) at The Old Registry, a pub at the foot of Main Street (2-5 Main) in the nearby town of Haworth. It’s a quaint place with mismatched chairs, multiple small rooms, and friendly service. We also had some so-so mulled wine ($5.50). Our Haworth plan had been to eat at either Cobble and Clay, The Hawthorn, or The Old Post Office, all clustered further up Main St, all highly-praised, but all packed.

We got to Haworth on the regular 10:26 train to the town of Keighley (after another last minute track change at the Leeds station), where we crossed over from the contemporary to the picturesque side:

Here we caught the equally picturesque steam train to Haworth (but picturesque came at a price – £22 pp to be exact, whereas the tickets on normal trains for short distances ranged from £2 to £4 each):

We were in Haworth to visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum on Church St., once the home of those sisters over their writing career. Here’s the foot of Main St., close to where we had lunch (after our visit to the Brontë house):

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Although this picture does not indicate it most of the walk from the Haworth station to the house was sharply uphill on wet, slippery cobblestones (coming back was even more treacherous, as downhill walks can be). Here’s the valley from whence we had come (the road the white car is on leads to the train station below the bottom left);

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Along the way, there was this

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(not quite as excellent as the sign outside one of Bombay’s fanciest schools: “This is a school. Do not urinate here”, but almost as).

Here’s the house:

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And a recreation of their kitchen (using, they say, items from the same era):

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In the last picture you see pieces that the museum claims come from the Brontë family, dating back to the sisters. And lastly, but mostly, the dining room:

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This was the table at which the family ate, and – more important than eating (even to me) --around which the sisters sat as they wrote.

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Sunday, December 29, part 1

We took the 10:16 train to Saltaire, a town along the same line as Haworth the day before, but just two stops from Leeds. The train left from the scheduled platform. It was just my wife and I, the others in our group having one by one dropped out of our excursions. We (wife and I) set a brisk pace when we travel, and don’t consider it a good vacation unless we return from it exhausted and needing another. Others in our party had different views on what a “vacation” is.

We had lunch at the Salts Diner:

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ordering Cumberland sausages and mash (£15) , fish&chips (£15), mushy peas (£1.50), mulled wine (£5), and a rather nice elderflower and pomegranate drink (£3.95):

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The food was fine, but not great (the fish&chips inferior, my wife said, to the version she’d sampled at Kirkgate Market on the 23rd). For dessert we had a scone with jam and clotted cream (£5.95) and a crumpet with jam (£4), an Americano and a Bailey’s latte. The crumpet was from a package, and in my prime I’ve made better. Here’s the latte and the wine:

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Alas, I’ll never be able to take some of our HO stalwarts here (@digga , @tomatotomato , @Amandarama @SteveR , @Ziggy, and least/most of all @GretchenS, lookin’ at you) because I’d have to watch you constantly:

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As the picture of the two drinks above might have revealed to some of you, we were at the Diner because it’s attached to the Hockney Gallery in Salt Mills, an old industrial mill now partly converted into an arts and crafts space:

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The gallery is part art exhibit and part store. The rest of the complex houses, among other things, the diner where we ate, a terrific bookstore, and a design store with some striking home and kitchen furnishings. There was some overlap here with what you’d see at, say, the design store at the MoMA in NY, but much that was new to me (especially some Japanese pieces).

Back to Hockney: He’s an oddball, and his views on several subjects are confused and objectionable, but his art is interesting and his dedication to keeping up with technology admirable. Here’s an attempt from the 1980s to create work that’s meant to be reproduced. The work, Tennis, is divided into 144 pieces, each of which can be faxed and reproduced anywhere. As a demonstration of this, the work below was assembled before a live audience as fax after fax came in:

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Some detail:

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Here’s a mailbox designed by him and used for one month to mail letters using a commemorative stamp also designed by him

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In the background are his sunflowers: a drawing of the flowers, pinned next to the actual flowers, the juxtaposition then photographed.

Saltaire, and Salt Mills, has an interesting history. Both the mill (textile) and the surrounding buildings were the creation of Titus Salt in the mid 1800s, one of those “enlightened” industrialists (unlike the muskrats and bozos of today) who realized that his business ventures would prosper even more if he was able to house healthy workers nearby and take care of their needs. So he founded a town:

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Leaving nothing to chance, and knowing the best for his people, he provided for them by sticking a church just outside the mill gates:

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This was the era of the dark Satanic Mills of William Blake, a theme we were to revisit on our visit.

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Sunday, December 29, part 2

That evening we met other members of our group, my wife and I invigorated, they well-rested, at the Brunswick for their highly-regarded (by @Nangbarou, MN from our party, and various other reviews) Sunday roast. They seem to have reduced their offerings, however. Their website suggested that those would be our choices:

But what we were offered were these, somewhat reduced ones:

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To assign fault where fault is due, I forgot to order the Beef Wellington in advance. Worse, since we were the last party that they seated, they were down to three servings of the beef, and none of the advertised chicken. But they subbed the chicken on the menu with chicken breast and comped us liberally with free servings of all their sides. Here’s my beef, after I’d worked on it a bit:

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The meat was nicely beefy (I could have lived with more of it), the gravy thin but flavorful, the Yorkshire pudding very good, and the vegetables really superb. You can see the potatoes – perfectly roasted – in the picture, but below the pudding were some equally good carrots. The parsnips we were comped were also excellent. I didn’t get to try the cheesy leeks, but others said they were very good (and hence polished off both servings before they got to me – they’re a lovely group, but savage when it comes to food):

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I did try the pigs in blankets (not sausages in pastry, as in the U.S., but sausages wrapped in bacon):

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and found them a bit of a salt bomb. The staff were very nice (one patted me affectionately on the shoulder after I placed the main order, and my wife – born and bred in Queens, NY, and not prone to sentimentality --exclaimed “I just love the people here!”). It was all-in-all a terrific experience, and a decent meal. I’d have to put it a good notch below the two great meals we’d had so far on this trip (Thai A Roy Dee at our first lunch, and Christmas dinner at Ma-Hé) but that’s not finding any huge fault. Those two were among the best meals we’ve had in the last five tears.

(Two other such meals were to follow in the next two days of our trip, but we were not to know that that night.)

PS: The lighting was dim, so the food looks less appetizing than it was. I could go back and edit but that would be dishonest. Worse, time-consuming. Just imagine everything looking better than it does. You’re all creative people aren’t you?

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Monday, December 30

We lunched at Kirkgate Market (see Kirkgate Market post toward the top of this thread), and made another visit to the Polish bakery, Karpaty. I also visited Latitude (Unit 31, 46 The Calls), a wine merchant, to pick up some sparkling wine for the following evening, out last in Leeds. The very knowledgeable sales person there recommended Ayala Brut Majeur, which turned out (the next day) to be delicate with tiny bubbles and quite delicious. He also suggested Roebucks Estates Claasic Cuvee, a British sparkler, as a comparison. It was tarter, less bubbly, and less complex

The big food excitement of the day was dinner delivered to our hotel from Zaap Street Foods. They turn out to have a few branches, and we got our delivery from the Vicar Ln. one, across the street from Thai A Roy Dee. This turned out to be our third great meal of the visit. We got pad kee mao (drunken noodles) with prawns (£15.45), Pad Pak Bung Fai Daeng (morning glory) with Tofu (£13.95), and Khow Ka Moo (tender, falling-apart pork) with rice (£14,50). The noodle and the morning glory dishes had a very satisfying level of heat, with the shrimp in the former very tender, and the tofu in the latter having sopped up a decent amount of sauce. The pork was fragrant with star anise. We couldn’t stop eating. (I’d missed the morning glory dish with pork belly at Thai A Roy Dee that @Nangbarou had recommended. We had a choice of pork belly or tofu here, too, but since we already had another pork dish, we went for tofu.) It was a really memorable meal.

Memorable enough that we ordered multiple portions of the first two dishes when we had a farewell NYE party the next day (with our champagne and other libations) in our hotel lobby. The Vicar Ln. branch was not delivering, but the Headingley one was. The food wasn’t just not-as-good as on the first occasion (our experience twice before on this trip – with Thai A Roy Dee and Ma-Hé ), it was actively mediocre. Neither dish was spicy, the tofu watery and the sauce it was in sweet. The noodles had none of the textural firmness as on the previous night. It was probably a branch variation.

Returning from this disappointment-on-the-31st to the 30th, earlier in the day my wife and I visited the Thackray Museum of Medicine (141 Beckett St, Harehills). The rest of the group, having popped up for the Sunday roast the night before, were sleeping it off (and MN, as energetic as we) had been there before. The museum (£11.95 – valid for a year) turned out to be aimed more at kids, with sketchy descriptions, and greater emphasis on Wow! than Why? But there was still a nicely gruesome reenactment of an early 19th century amputation, and a live talk on leeches (both speaker and leeches were live), including their uses in targeting blood clots to this day (leeches inject blood thinners in order to suck blood to their satisfaction, and can be targeted at clots). They – the museum now, not the leeches – have a small café and I got in a decent mince pie. Anand Sweets (recommended both by @Nangbarou and MN from our party) is very close to the museum, but we wanted to return to the Kirkland Market, which we did.

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Tuesday, December 31

Our fourth great meal of the trip was lunch at Trissur Pooram (again recommended both by @Nangbarou and MN from our party). What a restaurant this is

and what a meal it was! What a way to end our trip! We had pazham pori (lovely, crisp, greaseless plantain fritters) both plain (£6.50) and with tender, spicy beef (£9.50), beef dry fry with coconut (thin strips of beef and dried coconut slices, £9), and kallumakaya (panfried mussels coated in masala, £9) as starters. Our appetites thus stirred, we went on to a railway mutton curry (packed with unbelievable flavor, and the hit of the afternoon in an afternoon of hits, £12), squid roast (thickly-saucy, despite the name, with very tender squid), kottayam fish curry (nicely sour and very spicy, £13), pumpkin erisheri to balance all the meat (£12), kizhi parotta beef (beef wrapped in parotta, the whole steamed in a plantain leaf)

Trissur1

chicken dosa (the dosa wonderfully crisp)

Trissur2

(also visible in the picture are the opened kizhi parotta beef, the mussels and a parotta), and kappa beef biriyani (a version where the starch is tapioca, not rice)

Trissur3

As accompaniments, we had very good coconut rice (£4.50), matta rice (red rice, £4.50). parottas (£4.50 for two), and appam (£4.50 for two)

Trissur4

(this one, the last in the basket, a little overdone). Some beer was had, plus excellent, spicy, salty buttermilk (“sambaaram”, £4.50). We were sorry not to try their crab.

My mouth is watering as I write about this meal. We were to leave our hotel at 6:15 a.m. the next day, and perhaps that was just as well, since we didn’t get a chance to add another letdown (two minor, one major) to our three previous attempts at repeat performances.

Four astonishing meals in 10 days, and several very good ones. Not bad.


Prior to that group lunch, three of us went to the Leeds Industrial Museum (Canal Rd., Armley Mills, £5.80). Here’s the front of the building

IndustrialFront

and the appropriately industrial-seeming view at the back, taken from within

IndustrialBack

Among other industries that Leeds was known for in the 1800s and early 1900s was printing. Here are some tins printed there (not printed labels glued to tins, but print on the tins themselves):

IndustrialTins

Leeds was also a pioneer in the movie industry. Apparently, the first moving pictures were shot there. (https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/news/1017-day-to-celebrate-the-worlds-first-moving-images/) Here are early movie cameras:

and an early projector

IndustrialMovieProj

But the biggest industry here in the 1800s was textiles, especially woolen. Here’s a carding machine:

IndustrialWCarding

that took raw wool from a hopper at the extreme left, then drew it out (in a process still baffling to me – but there were a lot of cylinders involved with nails sticking out) into woollen threads wound onto spindles:

IndustrialWCarding2

The threads were weak and needed to be spun for strength

Before being woven into plain or patterned fabric

IndustrialWWeaving

(on the left are the punch cards used to program patterns into the weaving machine).

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A few closing comments:

  1. Leeds was a revelation. Apart from a couple of cricket associations I knew nothing of Leeds, or of Yorkshire in general. It turned out to be a compact, largely walkable city, with a lot to do and a lot to eat (as I hope my posts show). The diversity of the available food matched, in a small way, Queens, NY. Everything was also very accommodating – ramps, access, attitude – to our party needing to be able to get around a pram, walkers, etc. (Try getting a non-uriney elevator at Penn Station in NY.)
  2. Everybody was very courteous and friendly – whether newly-arrived in Leeds or been-there-for-generations – and always eager to converse. (On arrival back in Boston I had someone kick my suitcase away after I dragged it off the carousel and moved it several feet away on the grounds that “it was in my way”. I knew I was home, not in Leeds anymore.)
  3. Prices for everything – food, taxis – were very reasonable by current U.S. standards, including accommodation. Tips were rarely expected, and when added to restaurant meals for larger groups were 10%.
  4. We stayed at the Hampton by Hilton – one of those low-service chains. There was no room service, no mini-fridge, and the tiny shower had a dangerously slippery floor. Cleaning was erratic. But it was a few minutes walk from the top of Vicar Ln, at one corner of the center of Leeds, and offered a solid breakfast as part of the rate. The food was laid out in a smallish room. Proceeding clockwise (looking from above), there was a rack of clean plates (two sizes) , trays, napkins and utensils; a diy waffle station w/ syrups; a hot station with thick bacon, sausages (real and dried-out-looking vegan), scrambled eggs, baked beans; two coffee-drink pod machines (americanos, lattes, cappuccinos, hot chocolate, etc.), one of which frequently broke down, coffee/tea cups and teapots; hot water dispenser and tea bags; cold cereal station; oranges and bananas; cut fruit, yoghurt, ham, sliced cheese, and butter on ice; croissants, diy toaster and bread baskets (slices of light whole wheat and white); juice (orange and apple) and water station w/ glasses. You loaded up, then found seats in very large, light-filled (with as much light as the generally overcast skies in Leeds allowed) pair of rooms, with a variety of tables and counters and seating (dining chairs and stools, lounge chairs, sofas). A big plus of the hotel was that this room was available all day, and you could help yourself to plates, etc., even when getting in outside food. Next to the check-in desk there was a 24-hour bar. You can also order various small foods there at different pints of the day (chicken wings, burgers, individual pizzas – all resurrected from the freezer, and all mediocre, but better than nothing). The cost: £85/night (including breakfast). For comparison, a similarly bare-bones joint we stayed at across from Revere Beach (near Boston) last September cost us $329/night (also with breakfast, but a much inferior one).
  5. We have reasons to return to Leeds, and I hope it will be soon. There’s a lot more on @Nangbarou’s list that I want to try. My thanks, again, to them.
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I would gladly vacation with you and Ms. FD. For this is how we vacation.

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You’re on.

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Wow! What a super report! Thanks for sharing your trip in so much detail, it was fantastic to read.

I’m so pleased it was overall a very positive experience and that you had some awesome meals.

It’s strange reading someone else report on my humble stomping ground and many of my local favourite spots and actually makes me realise how much I take for granted.

You have also now scuppered my plans for cooking at home tonight as I feel an overwhelming craving to eat from Thai Aroy Dee or Trissur Pooram!

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Ma-Hé Coastal Indian sounds like a great accidental find too so I’ll be looking forward to checking that out soon.

Turns out that the pubs doing typical Xmas roast dinners being fully booked was actually a blessing :slight_smile:

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Truly epic report, a gold standard to which we should all aspire! Thank you!

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Good stuff. I like the 'lively children" sign.

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Lovely report.

I love Scottish tablet.

I don’t understand turning a nose down at all other fudges.

LOL.

We recieved 3 types of British fudge at Xmas this year: Buchanan’s clotted cream fudge brought from Scotland by a family friend (dense and chewy)

, Gardiner’s chocolate fudge (dense and less chewy than the clotted cream fudge, individually wrapped, more similar to Irish wrapped fudge), and Waterbridge gingerbread fudge (crumbly, more like Tablet).

All 3 had textures that were distinct from Tablet and distinct from Canadian and American fudge. Canadian fudge and most American fudge I’ve eaten is softer and much sweeter.

You would probably enjoy Penuche in the States if you enjoy Tablet. I can’t remember where you’re based. I usually have had Penuche out west.

I usually stock up on imported Tablet in Canada right after Xmas, when it’s half price. Many people don’t know what they’re missing.