Some new ground for two of Leeds’ existing and best-known independents, Sarto is a restaurant collaboration between the people behind The Brunswick on North Street, up past The Reliance, and the frankly awesome Laynes Espresso just outside the station. It focuses squarely on pasta, and was born out of a series of test pop-up events [...]
We had a weekend in Shoreditch the other week, and stayed at some achingly hip hotel, the type that has a lobby that people use as an informal shared work space. I’ve honestly never seen a higher concentration of Macbooks anywhere. For dinner one night, we ate at Rok, a loosely Scandinavian place on Curtain [...]
Last year, we went to Sicily. It was wonderful, a beguiling and fascinating place, riven with history, fiercely hot, passionately intense and honest. We swam in the sea from makeshift pontoons made of scaffolding, drove around the mountains and hills, stood in awe in the middle of a Roman amphitheatre, facing the spectacle of the [...]
Way, way back, I used to have a Saturday job in the centre of Leeds. This mainly involved constantly folding jumpers and failing to stop shoplifters, but it gave me one precious hour at lunchtime to wander in a big, arcing circle around the city, from one record shop to another. I’d inevitably end up in [...]
Ever stumbled into a new city, a place brimming with possibilities and with a reputation to match, and found yourself completely overwhelmed, fumbling around for somewhere to eat, realising that all the good places are closed/rammed/somewhere else, and being forced to settle for some lazy tourist trap with barely a local in sight? This happens [...]