Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Leeds
Hardens guides have spent 29 years compiling reviews of the best Leeds restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 157 restaurants in Leeds and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Leeds restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Leeds Restaurants
1. Sukhothai
Thai restaurant in Leeds
8 Regent St - LS7
Well-known Chapel Allerton Thai (est 2002) with a number of spin-offs, including in the city-centre, which retains a strong reputation in these parts. Feedback was surprisingly thin this year, but good all-round.
2. Aagrah
Indian restaurant in Leeds
St Peter’s Sq - LS9
“Sometimes the old guard can maintain its position – which certainly applies to the Aagrah”, a mighty chain whose “consistently high-quality and value-for-money” food features a “Kashmiri bias but includes most standards from the subcontinent”. Bonus – it’s “ideally located to enjoy Leeds nightlife before or after”.
3. Prashad
Indian restaurant in Leeds
137 Whitehall Rd - BD11
“Superb Indian vegetarian food” – “spicy but beautifully presented” – has made this family-run Gujarati a West Yorkshire institution since its humble beginnings in 1992. Now run by the second generation under Bobby Patel (brother Mayur founded Bundobust), it’s “still going strong” – and the “starters are spectacularly good”.
4. Kendells Bistro
French restaurant in Leeds
St Peters Square - LS9
“Intimate… delightfully eclectic” – there’s no shortage of plaudits for this “romantic” fixture, where there’s “no menu but all the choices are on a giant blackboard”. The overall effect is “just like dining in France…confit of duck, French onion soup, boeuf bourguignon etc.”, and the early-evening menu is “amazing value for money” too.
5. Salvo’s
Italian restaurant in Leeds
115 & 107 Otley Road - LS6
The Dammone family’s Headingley fixture (est 1976) is “a Leeds institution that maintains its standards and is still evolving”, having moved beyond offering first-rate pasta and pizza to add a next-door café/salumeria serving bolder ‘alter ego’ tasting menus on Fri and Sat nights.
6. Tharavadu
Indian restaurant in Leeds
7- 8 Mill Hill - LS1
“If you didn’t know it was there, you might just walk past, even though it gets very busy!” – this popular gem “a few minutes walk from Leeds Station” is well worth remembering for its “exemplary” Keralan food: “if you like fish and honest south Indian flavours then this is THE place”.
7. Issho
Japanese restaurant in Leeds
Victoria Gate, George St - LS2
“They have evolved the culinary experience” at D&D London’s splashy Japanese two-year-old, atop Trinity shopping centre, and featuring a “superb terrace”; nowadays “the food is just beautiful” (albeit “expensive”) and “they also have an amazing cocktail bar”.
8. Sous le Nez en Ville
British, Modern restaurant in Leeds
Quebec Hs, Quebec St - LS1
“Good French bourgeois cooking à la Yorkshire (ie big portions)” and a “great wine list” have combined to make this basement a popular city-centre refuge for thirty years. Weekly deliveries from Rungis market in Paris are complemented by more local produce. “A great spot for business” for which it’s often and highly recommended in the survey: it’s run “with efficient and friendly charm” – although “if you get one of the small alcoves, you may have to hunt for a waiter”.
9. Matt Healey x The Foundry
British, Modern restaurant in Leeds
1 Saw Mill Yd - LS11
MasterChef: The Professionals runner-up (2016) Matt Healey is at the stoves of this modern café/brasserie: a bare-brick, restored Victorian industrial space that’s been going a little under ten years. The “interesting” menu (some small plates, plus cheese, charcuterie, and sharing options) mixes more familiar items with “quite original” combinations, and feedback on the results is mostly – if not quite universally – very upbeat.
10. The Reliance
British, Modern restaurant in Leeds
76-78 North St - LS2
“You can feel the influence of Fergus Henderson” on Tom Hunter’s cuisine at this cavernous and carnivorous venue – also home to a small cinema – serving up “very tasty and interesting pub food and good real ales to go with it”. “The ambience is determinedly dressed down, which appeals to its clientele”, but it’s “far better than its unassuming façade suggests”.
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