I visited Rate My Takeaway star Danny Malin’s new food hall - and here's what I liked the most
A new food hall has opened - and it features some of the city’s best.
Rate My Takeaway Kitchen opened in Packhorse Shopping Centre, in Huddersfield, yesterday (September 13).
Bringing together some of Leeds’ best and brilliant eateries, pop-ups and businesses, the new food hall has been designed to expand the offering in the city.
Danny Malin announced the new venue a few weeks ago and I hadn’t expected it to have opened so soon. But I was excited for it.
Arriving at the Packhorse Shopping Centre, I couldn’t miss the food hall. The stairs leading to the upper floor of the venue were marked up with “Rate My Takeaway Kitchen”.
There’s a little bit of everything there; five permanent vendors and three rotational spaces for pop-ups as well as a bar and social media booth.
Birria Boyz, which has a site in Moortown Rugby Club, brought Mexican flavours to the site meanwhile Bobby’s Salt & Pepper, which can be found in Hyde Park, brought Asian-inspired fast food.
Pizza Pizza - one of Danny’s top spots for Brooklyn-style pizzas - has also taken a permanent spot in the new food hall, adjacent to Jay’s Desserts.
A personal favourite of my own, Hooyah Burgers, which can be found in Albion Street, is also in the line-up.
For these businesses, this is their second or third site in Yorkshire and the owners of each tell me they are thrilled to have opened in Huddersfield.
But the people who loved Wing-A-Ding, a Leeds restaurant that was born during the lockdown, will have to travel to the city to enjoy their wings, burgers and fries as the owner decided to shut their Chapel Allerton site ahead of this new opening.
Having lived in Leeds my whole life, I knew the menus of each restaurant like the back of my hand.
Like I always do, I ordered the Area 51 burger from Hooyah, a juicy beyond meat vegan patty with applewood smoked and cheese. I took it with lychee bubble tea from Huddersfield-based company Ai Tea.
It was nothing new to me I’ve enjoyed many meals from Hooyah before - but it’ll be a first for many in Huddersfield and most definitely not the last.
A few tours of the venue - which features plenty of seating for large groups - I decided to grab myself an ice cream from Jay’s Desserts.
By this point in the evening, the whole venue was buzzing with eager people from all over Yorkshire keen to try the range of food that’s on offer.
And it was wonderful to see five independent Leeds businesses thriving under one new roof.