My first encounter with Tom Van Zeller's small restaurant was when I attempted something of a whistle-stop tour of Yorkshire's finest dining. In the process, I ate a lot of Michelin-starred food (and pies; not forgetting lovely Hull pies), while managing to enrage much of Sheffield, which, apparently, I'd overlooked in a deliberately spiteful way. By the time I got to Van Zeller, I confess to being a tiny bit jaded.
There was nothing about the faintly starchy room in chi-chi Montpellier (contender with its namesake in Cheltenham for the UK's most middle-class postcode) that suggested we were in for any fireworks. It's a blandness of taupe and chocolate, with pictures of Tom to remind us who's boss. There are those high-backed dining chairs that infest every posh-ish small restaurant the length of the land, and which I shall ban as soon as I am made Queen of Restaurants. But, food-wise, it was all that and more the full Roman candle. I left vowing to return.
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