Vice and Virtue new venture brings fine-dining menu to Leeds foodies at home

Luke Downing, the owner of fine-dining restaurant Vice and Virtue, along with head chef Jono Hawthorne are both well known in the city for pushing the boundaries when it comes to food and drink - and their latest project goes even further.

For weeks they have been running a delivery and collection service from their two Feed restaurants in the city centre and Pudsey, which are New York style hipster cafe bars, and that has proved more successful than even they thought.

But now they are bringing fine-dining, just as you would enjoy in the award-winning Vice restaurant to your own home.

Last weekend they were offering a seven course-tasting menu, just as they have for years from their premises on New Briggate, but as a take-away, complete with instructions on how to finish off, prep and serve up the dishes. They included snacks to start, duck terrine with rhubarb, pistachio and truffle brioche; dry aged lamb rump with smoked Jersey Royals, Ramson and asparagus and strawberry meringue with elderflower, bergamot and sorrel.

Everything on the menu is made from scratch and the menu for this weekend has today been revealed.

It features black pudding popcorn and parmesan doughnuts; chicken liver cereal with raspberry, burnt watermelon and beetroot; gin and tonic trout with elderflower, cucumber and capers as well as a dessert, petit-fours and a bespoke drinks package for £35 per person (extra for the drinks).

Mr Downing said it has been one of the biggest departures from the norm but had gone down well with the city's food fans.

He said: "With Feed there were things we thought about doing and never got around to it, but, our arms were twisted and we thought let's just roll it out and thankfully it has taken off really well. We don't have the same demographic with Vice. It is a special occasion restaurant and people hear it is good and come but for this, people have trusted us and the product and it went really well. We had some of the most positive feedback we have ever had and so many enquiries about it."

Customers order the food by 8pm on Wednesday and pick it up at a time to suit them between 12noon and 8pm on Fridays and Saturdays. There are guidelines, written by Downing, on how to finish off preparing the dishes and serve them but customers are encouraged to have fun with it and be creative themselves.

The Vice offering is one of the first fine-dining takeaways in the city and has been one of the most challenging in many ways. Downing and Hawthorne have had to create a menu that is in keeping with the Vice way of food, but that can be transported out of the restaurant with instructions the amateur chef can re-create. Once they had the food format nailed, the hardest thing has been finding the containers to send it out in, says Downing, as suppliers of their recyclable and biodegradable boxes are not delivering.

Fine-dining at home has also opened up a new customer base and one that hopefully will continue to enjoy Vice food even when coronavirus has been overcome.

Downing added: "People can hopefully afford to do it at home, get their own drink, don't have to pay for service and can eat in their own time. We don't have to say we don't have a table available and it was in double figures the amount of people saying they were fitting this around the kids.

"It has totally changed the way I think about fine dining and the demographic of people that want it. I have thought about doing this for a long time but couldn't around the restaurants, it has opened up another demographic and has been interesting in a very different way."

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