Missing the bandwagon train!

Restaurant review by Lee-J Walker, joint managing director of TheBusinessDesk.com

I’ve never been someone who follows the crowd, that’s for sure.

Sometimes, this serves me well as it makes me feel more pioneering and independent when I decide to do things. Sometimes I maybe miss joining the bandwagon train but I rarely feel concerned about the latter. Of course, all my decisions in life are all correct. Not!

When The Ivy opened its doors in Leeds in 2018, I remember there was a huge buzz that this institution was bringing its fine dining to the city.

“Have you been to The Ivy yet?” people asked. Others commented “I can’t get in, but I’ve booked for 12 weeks time at lunch on a Tuesday!” It was almost held in esteem as much as the Dorsia in American Psycho for anyone who’s enjoyed the movie or read Brett Easton Ellis’s dark, bizarre novel.

Meh. “Sheep”, I thought. Barrrrrrr!!

I hate chain restaurants and I despise the celebrity chefs when they open their city chains across the country with their mediocre over or under seasoned tripe. “Bish bash Boosh” or whatever Jamie Oliver says.

Because of this, I have never been.

Whenever it’s a business lunch in Leeds, I’ve always put many other places first, mostly Whitehall Restaurant and Restaurant Bar & Grill for good reason and as anyone who knows me these are my second homes or locals as I prefer to think of them.

Well, today I visited The Ivy and frustratingly, how wrong was I? Drat.

From start to finish this lunch experience was second to none.

It wasn’t just the good quality food and when I say “good”, I mean good, but like any great restaurant, it’s about the entire experience.

We didn’t go heavy on the drink for once, instead we enjoyed a couple of glasses of the Whispering Angel rose with our three-course lunch which included a very good almost perfect steak tartare and an even lovelier whole lemon sole cooked on the bone. Magnificent I must say. I felt very proud of myself.

My lunch accomplice, aka Zoe – Mrs Walker enjoyed the Jackfruit bang bang starter and Korean chicken main.

How varied our choices are, we are after all as Paula Abdul sang, ‘opposites that attract’.

The star of the experience was Christtoff, our waiter for the lunch, a French waiter from Lille who used to work at Crafthouse who really took his job very professionally.

Not only did I try appallingly to communicate with him in my terrible French which let’s be honest is primary school level, he was professional enough not to mock me too much and treat me like a daft English gammon which I basically must have looked like.

We felt looked after and spoiled and we left smiling and content. Although I had to then do some work before I attended our wine tasting evening at Salt in Leeds – tough day.

I am most certainly going back to The Ivy and I’d just like to say, I should have ridden the bandwagon back in 2018 or just made an effort at least to visit before now.