This Leeds restaurant claims to be all about fire and smoke, but its kitchen is far more sophisticated than that
Ox Club, 19a The Headrow, Leeds LS1 6PU (07470 359961). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £80
Stacked up in front of the white tiled bar at Ox Club in Leeds are brown paper sacks of “British Barbecue Charcoal” alongside piles of kindling, both provided by the Leeds Coppice Workers. It’s a co-operative that manages woodland and sells the resulting kindling and logs. Three decades after I finished my degree in Leeds, the existence of the company makes my heart twang with nostalgia. Leeds is a big-boned city, full of Victorian heft; in the 80s the details of glowering façades were picked out in diesel grime. But even so you always felt the rugged presence of the countryside to the north, of the rocky outcropped hills and the clefted valleys. The existence of Leeds Coppice Workers suggests that the dialogue between town and country continues. As does this restaurant. The self-conscious log pile threatens us with rustic beardy parody. The cooking dodges all that.
The genius dish is the cubes of melon with fermented chilli. It’s one of those ideas you want to pass off as your own
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