Soundman

Calm down dear! I just said that in the bigger picture, that in my fairly well informed view, but obviously not as well informed as you, Anthony's simply wasn't good enough to survive. I did start to write something about the Corn Exchange, expanding too quickly etc etc, but I'm a diner, not a restauranteur.

Here's another mean spirited post, Anthony's just wasn't good enough. We tried all the various places a few times, only once had a good meal (At the one above the clothes shop, I forget what it was called) Apart from the one stand out time, there was always something wrong, most often terrible service, fairly often odd flavour combinations that just didn't work. We used to live a taxi ride from Leeds centre and would have loved to have loved Anthony's, but it just didn't cut it, and if we weren't prepared to travel 30 minutes, it's no surprise it never turned into somewhere people would travel further to.

Rara in Kew is pretty good, if not excellent, some interesting things on the menu, plenty of stuff you don't see often, and it's all very well executed.

Congratulations to everyone at LCS on their 25 years. I'll get that review done sooner or later, working 28 days straight over the build up to the Olympics, and over the games themselves takes it out of you.

I like Jay, I know what he likes, and thus can judge a review as to whether I'll like it or not. I think bloggers have done the biggest disservice to food writing imaginable, people consumed by ego and the ability to pay for food writing about it, rather than people with a talent for writing, writing about food, it can't work. I rarely read food blogs and when I do it's mainly to convince myself that I'm right to think they're written by fools with more money than sense.

I was indeed expecting a galette, and confidently told my wife that was what we should expect It was written on the menu, you'll get no criticism of waiting staff pronunciation from me..... What arrived was indeed a small patty, that reminded me in texture, but not taste, of a Thai fish cake. More to follow.

I'm overdue a writeup of our meal there last week, I'll do it this week. Suffice to say it was first class from beginning to end, the service and food were perfect, stand out dish was something I never would have ordered, mackerel with a pigs trotter and whelk gayette, really really good.

I was at St John last night, as good as ever, if not better, well worth a visit.

What a mammoth prick! (Mountain, not Goodfellow....) He always comes across as self obsessed with more mouth than talent. I haven't seen the episodes with him in it yet, but am looking forward to it now. I'm chuckling thinking of him as a drunken scrapper rather than the boring little prick he actually is

It's worth one last post surely? One to point out that Dave is consistent with the nonsense he posts, surely James Martin making 'Leeds join the Premiership' is no worse than a few years ago when he claimed that Matt Follas from Masterchef was a safe bet for a Michelin star, or have you gone off Matt now Dave, as he's not part of the Saturday Kitchen gangbang that you hold so dear?

I'd pay extra to be sure he wasn't in the kitchen

I don't know if this forum software supports it, but a lot support a feature called 'hide tags' which let you hide the photos unless people want to see them, I'd love it if people used them on here, I loathe bad food photos, and there's loads on here of late.

Don't know if you've noticed David, but the hot poached lamb has improved recently, it's served differently, in a dish which highlights the lamb rather than making it look like a bucket of chillis in broth! Only on our last visit to the Leeds branch was it served like this, so I was interested to see in your photos that it's served similarly over the Pennines now. As for the Green beans and pork dish, a true classic, the same everytime, and no worse for that.

Plenty around North Yorkshire at the moment, 20 quid a brace.

Sounds like you may have cooked it too hot, how hard was it simmering? Also not sure about this step 'I deeply browned the stew beef by frying in peanut oil deep enough to cover.' Is that your normal method? Sounds OTT for browning, more like deep frying, which is bound (IMO) to shrink and toughen the meat.