My wages as a journalist and my love of going out for food aren’t a good fit. So, I end up eating in far too many chain restaurants, heading to whichever one happens to have the best voucher on offer that day or hoping himself is feeling generous and treats me – which to be fair, he’s been doing quite a lot recently.
Panna cotta at Leeds Seventeen
This week, Groupon had an offer for Leeds Seventeen – spend £12 and get £25 off the bill, plus two glasses of sparkling wine. I know – another voucher, but at least this time it was for an independent restaurant.
Located in a very residential area of Alwoodley, Leeds Seventeen has already netted a number of awards since it opened a couple of years back. We arrived on Saturday evening for a 7pm reservation – I’d booked it the day before, but they didn’t have any record of my booking. Only a couple of tables were full, so it wasn’t a problem and the waitress was very friendly and apologetic about it.
She explained that, because we had a Groupon offer, we could only have food from the a la carte menu, which was fine by us. A couple of minutes later, she came back, bringing us our complimentary wine and some bread, with both butter and olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and said we could have the specials if we wanted.
For starters, himself ordered one of the specials – crispy pork berry, with smoked paprika lentils and mustard dressing – and I got the lightly grilled mackerel, pickled rhubarb and watercress salad from the a la carte menu. Both were good, especially the lentils and the pickled rhubarb.
I went for the confit of duck leg for mains. This was really tasty, although I was surprised to see some raspberries, alongside shallots and baby beetroots. As random as it was, it worked.
Leeds Seventeen's Confit of duck
The boy ordered rib eye steak, fat chips and green peppercorn and brandy sauce – again, this was good and the meat was tender.
Steak and chips at LS17
At this stage, the restaurant was after filling up and I was pretty full, but having already seen some desserts heading to other tables, I was really tempted. Initially I was going to have the creme brulee and blood red orange sorbet, because of an obsession with this flavour, but I’ll be in Scotland next weekend, enjoying this is Largs, so I decided to go for the panna cotta, served with rhubarb jelly and rhubarb sorbet. This was a great desert – definitely one of the best I’ve had for ages and it looked so pretty, as you can see above.
Himself ordered the restaurant’s signature dish, the Leeds 17 treacle sponge with creme anglaise – “served in the tin”. I think mine was better, although the presentation was good – very Great British Menu.
Leeds 17 treacle sponge with creme anglaise
Overall, the food was very good, service was excellent, atmosphere was fine and it wasn’t too expensive. Total bill, including a beer, was about £55, with our £25 discount knocking this to £30, so I was able to return the favour for once!
Presentation: 9/10
Food: 8.5/10
Value: 8/10
Venue: 7/10
Service: 8.5/10
Average: 8.2/10
