Sam's Chop House South Parade Leeds

We tried out Sam's Chop House for dinner this Friday for the first time in years, and I have to admit that it was a pretty good dining experience, and about as close to a simple traditional British menu as you can get in Leeds; something greatly appreciated by my Chinese dinner guests.

Every one was particularly impressed with the Colcannon potatoes with crispy bacon and poached egg, which scored very high for us all on taste texture and presentation. The salmon entrée was a little dry and flavourless though, as was the pork chop, which leads me to suspect that they were cooked from frozen, a surefire way to kill your food twice over. A chop should be juicy guys, not dry and compacted. This said, Sam's Chop House's take on the good old beef burger was very good indeed, with properly ground beef of the sort that fills you up even after eating only a small quantity. The dish came with two medium sized burgers rather than one huge one, making it very manageable to eat without them disintegrating, and offering scope for good presentation.

Aside from a few issues with the dishes, the staff were helpful and prompt and overall this was a more than acceptable dining experience at a decent price. Well done guys

Leeds Indian Restaurants - Sheesh Mahal Kirkstall Road

If you are looking for a great Indian Restaurant in Leeds, you could do a lot worse than visiting the Sheesh Mahal on Kirkstall Road. I am a great curry lover, and luckily Leeds has some fabulous curry houses to satisfy my passion for spicy food. The Sheesh Mahal really stands out among these as somewhere where the traditional curry dishes have real flavour, and the staff really go the extra mile to ensure you have a positive dining experience, from giving you good information about the dishes and making recommendation right through to packing up anything you can't eat to take home and even calling a cab for you. The guys at the Sheesh Mahal manage to do this, moreover, without being intrusive. Fabulous!

For other great curries in Leeds, the following also come highly recommended: Curry Corner, Hansas, Nawaab and Akbars Restaurant

The Wardrobe Leeds - Dining Out in Leeds

It's really hard to get a bad meal out in Leeds, but if you want to be disappointed the Wardrobe seems to have all bases covered. On a recent dinner date, everything started off okay, with a very welcome brandy, but then the menu came. As menus go it was short and to the point, lacklustre and not something that gives much scope for regret over what you didn't order. I plumped for the rib-eyed steak and my date went for the liver and mashed potato. I'm willing to admit that it tasted okay, and the pepper sauce was ok as pepper sauces go, but with a choice of just a garlic sauce or a pepper sauce, this wasn't really much more than £4.99 Brewers Fayre pub grub at three times the price. The portions were tiny - I went through my meal in two minutes flat, and the rib-eyed steak tasted almost exactly the same as the burger meat served at Burger King, and the fries did nothing but compound the similarity.

To top it all off, around five minutes after finishing this god-awful excuse for a dining experience, a bouncer asked us to leave, because we were, eh hem, kissing. Well so sorry to have offended your sensibilities, and you know, well, after having spent more than £70.00 in the Wardrobe in about 45 minutes, I was expecting a little more tolerance. I will evacuate what I ate at your establishment with about as much pleasure as I evacuated the establishment itself. The sense of humour I had when I walked into the Wardrobe was possibly the only positive thing that I took out with me.

I eat out in Leeds at least twice a week and Leeds city centre boasts some excellent restaurants, and I'm barely ever disappointed, but this was just a joke.

I suppose at the end of the day the lesson is that if you want a romantic meal out in Leeds, or even just a decent meal out in Leeds, then stick with what you know and places that are reliably good such as Restaurant Bar and Grill, The Reliance, Hansas, Teppanyaki, Little Tokyo, Salvos, La Tasca, The Millrace or Dos Amigos or even the Slug and Lettuce, Cafe Rouge or Ha Has at a push, and many many more.