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Restaurant review: Blackhouse Restaurant and Bar, East Parade, Leeds
IT costs about a thousand pounds to buy return flight tickets to New York, so its rather pleasing to discover that for less than a tenth of that you can experience Manhattan right here in Leeds.
It’s not that Blackhouse Restaurant and Bar sets out to be like the world’s foremost metropolis or that it has an annoying ‘I Heart New York’ sticker on its rear bumper. It’s just that when you’re sat in the bar surrounded by luxurious chunky oak furniture and lounge ferns and staring at the turmoil of the city through a wall-to-wall window, if you let your mind wander only a short distance, you could be in New York.
This is a big point in Blackhouse’s favour and it’s something they have achieved without really trying.
As soon as you step through the door, you start to relax. It’s as busy inside the restaurant as it is outside, the difference being the people inside are busy enjoying themselves, whereas the poor creatures outside are still working.
Oliver pitched up at Blackhouse on Friday night about 9pm without having booked a table. The place was really buzzing, the atmosphere warm and inviting. We were told there were no tables available immediately and asked to wait at the bar but the maitre d’ assured us it wouldn’t be long before we were seated.
One thing which always makes a restaurant shine, which always impresses, is confidence, not just in general or in how staff present yourself to paying customers but having an in-depth knowledge of your product and staff at Blackhouse certainly have that.
Upon reaching the bar, the bartender effortlessly reeled off a list of drinks, including a lost list of wines and what they were. I imagined he did this while leaning on the bar and running a towel around the inside of a glass. Hoestly, the place is so cosmopolitan, you wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if Joey from Friends sauntered in.
We ordered a white wine and a draft lager, then perched on a couple of bar stools and just people-watched.
All of the staff were neatly turned out, all immaculately manicured, as if they had just stepped out of a salon.
So, enough about the effortlessly schmoozy atmosphere, what about the food?
As promised, it was not long before we were shown to our table, a secluded booth to the rear of the restaurant, which offered inward vistas of the cityscape, which included things like towering concrete office blocks, air conditioning units and steam. In any other setting, it would have been humdrum, borderline boring but when you are hermetically sealed in a little pocket of New York, it becomes part of an urban safari.
As our waitress dropped menus off, she tempted us to order a pre-starter in the form of olives and bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, which cost £6. It was delicious, don’t get me wrong but the point is, it’s unnervingly easy to spend money in a place like this - even before our starters, if you count drinks at the bar, we’d notched up £16.
Still, when in New York...
The menu at Blackhouse is uncomplicated and broadly split into seafood and steaks, or ‘surf ’n’ turf’ as it’s so often referred to. There are other dishes to choose from but these are its staples and what it prides itself on. You can spend a lot of money on steaks too, because aside from cuts which wouldn’t lighten the average wallet too much, there are more expensive, dare I say exuberant, things, like the Wagyu Kobe Fillet, which is described as the “daddy of all steaks” and at £55, it’s also the daddy of all price tags but still you find yourself considering it and wondering what a cow which has been massaged all its life (lucky cow!) tastes like. But for the fact Oliver tried this during our last review (February 2010), we would have tried it again, too.
If you want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on seafood, then there’s an equally expensive oversized prawn (sorry lobster) for £45.
Succulent
To start, we ordered the Blackhouse platter, which was nice but at £14.75, a little too pricey for what we received. The food was succulent, especially the calamari, although the chilli and ginger chicken skewers were scalding hot to the touch to begin with and a warning would have been nice. It also came with two duck spring rolls, which were a touch heavy on the lemon grass, and fish cakes. On reflection, a nice starter, not too filling, just a touch over-priced.
For my main, I ordered a 310g rib-eye steam (£19), which was cooked to my liking (medium to well-done) and came with chips and salad and a choice of sauces. Basically, perfection on a plate.
My dining partner went for the giant slab of ribs (£19.25), which truly was enormous and lovelt too except for the sauce, which was neither here nor there and was verging on being bland – it lacked the lip-smacking sticky tang one normally associates with spare ribs. We also ordered a house salad for £3.75.
To go with our meal, we ordered a bottle of wine, a white Villa del Fiori Fiano di Sicilia, which at £18.75, a fruity little number and not badly priced.
For dessert, I had maple and pecan cheesecake (£5.75), while my partner ordered a lemon sorbet (£3.75). The cheesecake was light and refreshing, everything a dessert should be, while the sorbet was wonderfully crisp.
Together with coffees to finish – I ordered a mocha (£2.75), my partner an Americano (£2), the final bill came to £111.20.
Some would argue this is too much for a meal out but Oliver would beg to differ. In fact, with three courses and a bottle of wine, which wasn’t the cheapest but was by no means the most expensive by a long haul, we think it was bang on the money.
It would be hard to visit Blackhouse and do all that and have a good time (and let’s face it, if you are going to go out, you may as well) and not spend close to £100.
Of course you don’t have be so exuberant – you could skip drinks at the bar, skip the enticing pre-starter, order water for the table and order soup (£4) for your starter and line-caught mussels (£10.50) for your main and you would probably end up with a bill half as impressive.
It’s also fair to say you could take the whole family here, skip starters and order a cheaper wine and still be around the £70 mark.
But you could also spend a great deal more in this city-centre escape from the city and if you are going to take someone out for a special occasion, or you just want somewhere to recover from the rigours of the city, you couldn’t do too much worse than book a table at Blackhouse.
If we had to be picky – and we have to – then staff are perhaps a little too efficient, our waitress fired menu options at us like she was reading the small print on a credit card advert, although she was cheery with it, and some menu items are a little overpriced, the sauce on our spare ribs was too watery but these are niggles more than made up for by the unbeatable atmosphere.
And it’s a damn sight cheaper than flying to New York.
FACTFILE
* Blackhouse Restaurant and Bar, off East Parade, near Infirmary Street, LS1 5PS
* Opening times: noon-11pm every day
* Tel: 0113 246 0669
* www.blackhouse.uk.com
STAR RATING
FOOD.............................. ****
VALUE............................ ****
ATMOSPHERE............. ****
SERVICE ....................... ****
***** EXCELLENT **** VERY GOOD *** GOOD ** AVERAGE * POOR
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Comments
There are 4 comments to this article
Page 1 of 1
DocLorro
Friday, August 5, 2011 at 02:31 PMI wonder if the reviewer would make the same comments if he had to pay for the meal and drinks out of his own pocket? Clearly this person has lost the plot if he thinks ordinary people who read the YEP can afford to pay these ridiciulous amounts of money for pretentiousness. Unless of course they save up or stop buying the YEP. As a matter of interest is the reason why the YEP keeps going up in price to pay for these staff junkets?
geoffb
Friday, August 5, 2011 at 01:07 PMI agree with Ken, but when your getting a VAT receipt you know whose paying! 4 stars for value ?? As for line caught mussels, I've seen line caught sea bass and mackerel but never line caught mussels must take some doing. Perhaps they were rope grown mussels
morleyuk
Friday, August 5, 2011 at 12:59 PMMost people don't call dark and gloomy 'New York Style'. The food is good, just you probably can't see it. For the same price you could go to BIBIs (and eat in some light), or flights Majorca for 2 and save £27.22.
ken2
Friday, August 5, 2011 at 01:55 AMIf you think that £111.20 for a meal for two is ok then you are living in a different world to ordinary people. Don't you know (probably not ) that many elderly people have to live on a similar amount for a full week. Get real mate your reviews might be taken seriously then.
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