Headingley, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

A lot of business has been done over “lovely food, very well served” at this Leeds institution – a classic French restaurant that’s “been going forever” (well, since 1991 – “I don’t think the menu has changed but it’s really nice food for a business lunch or dinner”). Founded by restaurateur Robert Chamberlain and executive chef Andrew Carter, who still run the show, it occupies a basement in the city’s financial district. Top Tip – the heavyweight wine list runs to 70 pages.

A report of “the best meal of the last year” is indicative of the quality of the food at this modern canalside venture in the city centre, which originally opened five years ago at Kirkgate Market. Chef Mark Owens, who trained at Le Gavroche and was head chef at the Box Tree, sends out a souped-up gastropub menu featuring the likes of beef & oyster sausages. Founder Liz Cottam closed her flagship restaurant, Home, last year.

2024 Review: Attached to a luxurious spa hotel, this modern brasserie is open all day (with other options in the hotel being the more ambitious Horto, or afternoon tea in the Conservatory). One fan notes it as a good place for a relaxed business meal, but there is also the odd concern that its “good ambience can be let down by average results at excessive prices”.

2022 Review: This “lovely hotel” is so proud of its own produce that it named its main restaurant Horto, Latin for kitchen garden, and charged young head chef Callum Bowmer (who arrived for two weeks’ work experience in 2010 and never left) with the task of creating showcase menus from it. The resulting meals are “really enjoyable”.

2024 Review: “An airy space with unusual dishes and great cooking” – this comfortable independent opposite the civic hall scored highly in this year’s annual diners’ poll. The focus is on small plates, some of them very original: who’s for ‘honey, soy and gochujang roast carrots, toasted sesame, with tahini satay’?

Well known as “a gorgeous getaway spot” ten minutes’ drive from Halifax, this old corn mill has served as a “warm and cosy” inn for more than a century, with a “lovely restaurant” that offers a “good range” of modern British dishes “cooked to a high standard” (available in either tasting or à la carte formats, plus sandwiches at lunchtime). There are 11 “beautiful rooms upstairs” for overnight stays.

“A Yorkshire institution” that’s “not to be missed!” – These famous tea rooms owe their existence to Swiss founder Frederick Belmont, who opened them in 1919 and his family now also operate at four other locations across North Yorkshire. “A great, old school and classic experience” – they are “everyone’s favourite” and afternoon tea is “a real occasion” that’s “well worth queuing for”. Top Menu Tips – “scrumptious fat rascals” (a kind of Yorkshire scone).

2022 Review: A “very good value, high-quality place in Ilkley” where Joel Monkman’s large and small plates of British seasonal fare continue to win plaudits three years after its founding; also on the menu, lunchtime BBQ Buns and hearty Sunday roasts.

“Intimate and incredible” – Sam Pullan and Nicole Deighton’s lovingly restored ‘Cafe, Bar, and Wall of Flame Rotisserie’ channels the late Victorian vibes of its namesake on this site to deliver a thoroughly 21st-century formula, mixing an “ever-changing menu” of “innovative” bites incorporating small plates, and chicken from the rotisserie, plus “wonderful drinks”.

“A great addition to Harrogate” courtesy of Bradford-born Varun Kanna, who took over the space above Sukhothai in 2024, striking out on his own after a tutelage that included a stint at the famed Restaurant Sat Bains. The “food is unique with British produce, but having an Asian twist from Japan and India”, whether you go for the £32, three-course weekday set lunch or “very memorable” £85 per person tasting menu taking in the likes of crab curry and wagyu beef, and leaving diners – even “a couple who treat The Fat Duck as their local” – “full of praise”.

“Excellent food and service in a garden centre”, where you eat “surrounded by giant plants in a large, airy room” – the “most unusual” formula (“but all the better for that”) at top chef Frances Atkins’s crowd-pleaser of a café. Those who visited her former venture – the posh Yorke Arms – report that the food is “just as good as it always was” there, whether you use it as a “favourite ‘brekkie-with-the girls’ haunt”, as per one reporter’s wife, or you go for tea and cake, when the “baking is something else” (dinner is also offered on Fridays). Add in “wonderful, attentive service” (staff “remember you even if it’s weeks since your last visit”) and “the entire place is a joy!”. (Note – the formula-price is for the supper menu: you eat in the daytime much more cheaply).