Friends of Ham - Leeds

4-8 New Station St, Leeds LS1 5DL

How does the pub chain Yates still exist? Of everything that died a death in the last recession, that hideous home of the brown square-toed shoe and flesh-oozing boob tube, should surely have been next against the wall, after Woolworths.

They must have signed a pact with the devil though, because they're so alive and well in Leeds that the street outside is awash with faux leather and flab.

For those who prefer a different kind of meat market on a Saturday night, Friends of Ham is right next door.

A place I've wanted to visit for a long time, House of Ham (as I keep calling it, for some reason) has already been visited by everyone and anyone I can think of, reviewed within an inch of its life and always coming out smelling of pork scented roses.

I literally have nothing new to add, but when's that ever stopped me?

A restaurant-cum-bar, Friends of Ham has that Alpine feel, on a freezing Northern evening, of crisp, cold air on the outside and a room full of sweaty bodies, booze, ham, and cheese on the inside.

That's basically the review right there, in a nutshell.

Ham and cheese, served up on several platters. To not love that, you'd have to be dead inside. The sweaty bodies? That's just a strong indication that it's well loved. I guess, unfortunately, the same holds true for Yates, so it's not the greatest litmus test.

What we ate, I don't really know. Three platters, split six ways, with a salad on the side, and some extra bread - that's what. The specifics can go to hell. I don't pay to read menus (and I still haven't paid for that meal, actually 😬). I pay (when I do) to feel warm, fuzzy, full, and a lot happier than when I arrived.

That's what Friends of Ham delivers. Fulfilment. An excellent wine, washing down the lashings of thinly sliced porky deliciousness, in many shapes (mainly round, to be honest) and thinnesses, accompanied by wedges of great, full-flavoured cheese.

I wish I could say more, I really do. I wish I'd taken some photos, I really do. I wish I had the facility, capacity, or inclination to learn what I dined on, I really do. But, I don't, so you'll have to take my word for it's excellence, with this short, mainly ignorant summary:

Flipping good.

If you're ever in Leeds, visit.

Gaucho - Leeds

21-22 Park Row, Leeds, LS1 5JF

I'm sure I'll enjoy being spoon-fed when I'm 80. At this age though, it just wouldn't seem appropriate - although the staff at Gaucho in Leeds might disagree, coming as close as is possible to offering that service without actually shoving a forkful of food down your throat.

One of a chain of Argentinian steak restaurants, Gaucho sits in a plush basement along Leeds' smart looking Park Row, a couple of doors up from the Slug & Lettuce - that purveyor of the finest generic lagers, pints o'wine, odd smells, and 2-4-1 chicken tikka on a Tuesday. Delightful!

Once seated, the spoon feeding begins. Your Gaucho waiter will deliver a non-optional description of every steak they offer, the geography of Argentina, and later the cheese. Granted the last one is necessary as you need to know which of them smells like feet; but the other two were definitely not.

I get it. It's steak. It comes from Argentina. You sell it and you're very proud of that. That doesn't mean I want a tray of your finest cuts - looking like something from a pathologists lab - thrust under my nose. Nor do I want a geography lesson on the topographical differences of a South American country. I just came here to spend someone else's money and eat! Help me out here!

Aside from the primary school lesson in ordering steak, Gaucho succeeded at the one thing I didn't expect it to - ceviche - and failed at the one thing I did - steak. That's a problem for a steak restaurant, granted. The ceviche was light, refreshing, and crisp, with the only negative being the poor slices of scallop which struggled to find a way through a deluge of chilli. The steak, while large, mouthwateringly good to look at, tender, and cooked to perfection, offered almost no taste - not even a hint that this was once a cow. With the edges trimmed, the rarest of the two pieces could have passed for tuna.

Such a disappointment for a restaurant that with a sleek black interior, mirrors set at every five paces, cow-hide covered chairs, and prices on the high side for London promised so much more. The abundance of salt that covered every side didn't help much either, although it could have been a poor attempt at injecting some flavour into the dinner. 

When the cooking is good, but the taste not, fingers point towards the ingredients. Argentinian steak is praised the world over, and rightly so. Succulent, tender, flavoursome. I know as I've eaten it locally and could point to where if she held the map up a little longer. Steak cut with a spoon is possibly one of my most over-exhausted stories. However, here its quality failed. A cheap cow chosen to reduce the import duty or transport costs? Who knows. I don't know anything about buying steak from abroad. It just didn't work, and perhaps that's no bad thing. 

While I'm not some militant local food activist, there's something not quite right about finding Argentine steak in Yorkshire. Gaucho made a song and a dance about the local heritage of their cheese. It's local, it's from a cow, so why can't their beef be? In London the Ginger Pig thrives, dragging meat in from across the country. Yet that same meat bypasses the centre of Leeds and a restaurant a tall cow might be able to spit on from the heights of the Dales. Such a shame and such a wasted opportunity.

LS6 - Headingley, Leeds

16A Headingley Lane, Leeds, LS6 2AS

Failing to conform to gender stereotypes when ordering food often gets more than just a raised eyebrow. It would seem that it's just not socially-acceptable for a man to order a goat's cheese tart at the pub if a burger is also on the menu. For society, a man's choice of food is a statement of his masculinity - the modern day equivalent of beating your chest, baring your fangs, flinging excrement at your challenger, before gauging his eyes out, cracking his skull open and feasting on the sweet goo inside.

Well, call me a sissy, but I'm as happy ordering a cranberry juice and veggie burger at Byron as I am ordering the Boss Hog at Bodean's.

And so it was at LS6 - a boho cafe in the centre of the student village of Headingley in Leeds - that my eyes skipped past the burger option to the Clock Cafe salad. Named after the clocks adorning the wall (they're simple folks in the north), the salad was beetroot, pear, walnut, and goat's cheese. A really delicious salad, served in pleasantly 'cool' surroundings, probably helped by the time of year - the only evidence of the unwashed student population being two identical blondes sharing tales of past 'gap yahs'. Strangely, tap water at LS6 comes with a slice of cucumber floating in it, leaving a musty taste not dissimilar to the smell of a rotten cabbage. Weird.

Of course, as I was eating a salad I needed a side of hummus and pitta to keep my calorie levels up...and a pint of some local ale to maintain my masculinity. Now, where's that recipe for pea soup...