The Piazza by Anthony

[food1]

Went here today for lunch. Nice Sunday hum about the place. Really does deserve to do well. Couldn't leave without buying a couple of their muffins, there the business! As for the Jay Rayner piece, Im sure it will do them the power of good. From experience, the review he gave us last year, turned into six months solid business off the back of it. Far better for business than any guide book entry and accolades we have recieved.

[Amy D.]

I ventured into the corn exchange on Saturday, curious to examine the "gourmets dream" & was a little shocked to find the once thriving building is now empty except for the basement. I have to say I was left wondering why all the previously bustling shops had been forced out, seemly just to give the interior of the building a rather bland paint job and install some rather expensive & slightly unnecessary lights in the ceiling.

Still I descended into the basement to explore the shops; we were eating at red chilli later so just a browse of the shops for us. So deli selling the usual overpriced items with a cheese room at the back, we can both be fanatical about our cheese but these seemed out of bounds as they were in their own sealed room, & with no servers around we were none the wiser. a look at the patisserie items sparked my interest I decided upon a pre-meal indulgence only to discover there was no one waiting to serve us, he had disappeared to take something to the sat down diners. Other times I might have waited but this was a spur of the moment thing & I was becoming peeved at the lack of service in this place.

I was a bit mystified by the chocolates, true I wouldn't have bought any because I'd prefer to make my own, but these reasonably nice looking confections were ruined by their presentation. It's difficult to explain but it's almost as though the chocolates have been stored in a box which was then shaken to slightly dull some of the exteriors & create small chocolate flakes with the chocolates then neatly piled onto the display plates & the resulting chocolate flakes/dust in the box then poured all over the display case, more misshapes than high end.

Perhaps it sounds like I’m complaining for the sake of it, me without trying any of the food. But if you want to people to buy the products it really helps if there's people there waiting to sell the stuff. I really wanted to try the bread & butter? Muffins & the Madeleine looked really tasty. Hopefully they'll manage to fill the many empty shops in the building & it'll again be a place to visit but for now if I’m in Leeds & want to visit a gourmet’s dream I'll head straight past the corn exchange & into the market

[Gary Marshall]

That's the first, and hopefully the last time i see 'gourmets dream' and 'leeds market' in the same sentence.

[Amy D.]

gourmet dream was taken from the corn exchange website & whilst I wouldn't necessarily describe the market as such its the best place to get fish & has a few other gems that put it far above a virtually empty building & is a whole lot less pretentious

[Gary Marshall]

great review by terry durrack inthe indie on sunday. Sure google will locate cant cut n paste at mo

[YKL]

Hopefully the following will work ..

link to review

[food1]

Took a rareish day off today and decided to venture over to Leeds, back to the Piazza, looking forward to my third visit. What a disappointment. What the hell has gone on with portion sizes? Small, you what, the main courses we had were absolutely no bigger than starter sizes. This a generous description, unlike the food. For example, I had the seared calves liver with horseradish mash. Sounded great. What came was tasty enough, but it would be no exaggeration to say the dish comprised of two one and half inch squares of liver, with a dessert spoon of mash and slick of sauce. Thats it. £11.95 a pop. I was expecting from previous visits, at least a full piece of liver and maybe a little quenelle of mash. Totally shocked. For the fist time ever, I thought I had to complain to the waitress. She sort of shrugged her shoulders, said sorry. That was it. Not good enough and I said so.

I feel pretty embarrassed as I've raved to people about this place from previous visits. Was never going to expect builders portions at the prices but I don't expect tapas either. Something as gone faux. Its a brilliant, brave concept but on the face of what we were served today, they are taking liberties and its better than that. My worry is, if they going down 'the lady who lunches' formula, less is more, they will suffer.

We had two glasses of wine, two starters and two 'mains'. This came to fifty quid dead. When I read what David Goodfellow spent on a three course lunch at Purnells, feeling pissed off from our experience is an understatement. Unfortunately will not be rushing back anytime soon.

[Gary Marshall]

Took a rareish day off today

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me too, i went to the star, v good.

haven't eaten at the piazza for a while but often pop in for a drink, seems busy enough.

[food1]

Well when you do next eat there let us know about it. I really sincerely hope, what I sampled, isn't the new way forward for them. As I said earlier, it certainly wasn't like that on previous visits.

What did you eat at the Star? One of my suppliers was telling me the other day that Andy Burton is now the head chef of the Star, nothing to do with the Pheasant as previously told. Just hope Pernie keeps a tight grip on the style of food. I was pretty suprised at the appointment, as Burton is a chef in his own right with a completely different style. I was also told he(pernie) is stepping away to concentrate on a cook school and the telly??

How times change eh!

[Gary Marshall]

What did you eat at the Star? One of my suppliers was telling me the other day that Andy Burton is now the head chef of the Star, nothing to do with the Pheasant as previously told. Just hope Pernie keeps a tight grip on the style of food. I was pretty suprised at the appointment, as Burton is a chef in his own right with a completely different style. I was also told he(pernie) is stepping away to concentrate on a cook school and the telly??

How times change eh! 

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will write it up, yes andy burton is at star not the pheasant but andrew was there yesterday as per usual, they have a few cookery days mentioned on the website but doesn't look like a major departure for them.

[CalumC]

Forgot to even write that i'd been. We were a little disappointed as well. As Amy D. said, the service is very questionable. The way it is structured seems to mean they've gone for 1-2 people serving across all the shops and if said people are currently serving in another section, if you're not familiar with the system, you can quite easily stand in an empty shop for some time before anyone notices.

Anyway, it was the meal i was going to mention. I remember pig cheeks for a starter, certainly a starter portion. Meat was fairly bland despite obviously having been cooked for a long time. Miss CalumC had the whole chicken for main, seemed fairly happy with it. I had a ravioli of some sort, i can't quite remember as it was about a month or so ago. Langoustine ravioli with a veloute sort of thing. Desserts were the worst part. I had the ice creams as nothing else really shouted at me. There was a good orange sorbet, a very average caramel/toffee sort of thing, and a poor chocolate with pieces of chocolate from the shop in. The last was particularly gritty. The lady had the chocolate fondue which was an embarrassment to chocolate. Barely warm, very watered down chocolate with stale brownies, a few other assorted small pieces of pastry (croissant i remember), strawberries (march, strawberries. Really?), banana (mushy and flavourless) and my sworn enemy, the physalis.

I really hope that this isn't representative of the rest of the anthonys dining 'chain', i've yet to experience the flagship, or flannels, and after being so keen on the piazza's otherwise great feel and produce, it was quite a let down. If this is what anthony is offering in the price bracket, give me red chilli any day.

Edited May 8, 2009 by CalumC (log)

[YKL]

a shame to hear of disappointed punters. My visits have generally scored very well on food, and variably on the service, but overall still good enough to have it as a default location for mid-range lunch or dinner. but then i do love the room.

[Gary Marshall]

very pleasant lunch today, black spaghetti and squid to start in very moreish cream sauce and very nicely seared squid tubes with roast hake, garlic cream and beans, atop some pomme puree for main, well worth £10.50. think the black spaghetti was £4.95, can't go wrong at those prices.

mate had moules then chorizo risotto.

quite busy for tuesday lunchtime and food well worth the money. good attentive service too.

[david goodfellow]

After our lunch at Anthony's today and a casual stroll around the city centre, in the hope of building up bit of an appetite, we finally walked through the doors at about 5.

The building is stunning, and inside looking down, and then back up the the amazing ceiling gives you some idea of how expansive this place is.

The architects have done a great job.

Transfer this building say to Cheltenham and all its shops would be let, instead of the three here,(upper floor) Its a real shame Leeds is suffering so badly in this recession

Mr Flinn junior was busy topping some cakes, talking to a customer, whilst Mr Flinn senior was close by chatting to another customer.

Very few people eating although its an odd time of day to judge.

I have the utmost respect for anyone who takes on a project of this magnitude, the overheads must be colossal

I do hope it is well supported

We could not manage a coffee and cake never mind anything else, I felt slightly guilty as I was keen to do my bit to support this place, so to speak

We'll try harder on our next visit

I wish them every success.

[Soundman]

As I understand it, the lack of shops let is nothing to do with the recession and everything to do with the general state of the building.

[Gary Marshall]

Very pleasant lunch recently, tried to book a table at 10.00 am but phone rang out, so pitched up at 1pm as a walk in. I was expecting to easily get a table, but found we'd got the last table on a wet wednesday lunchtime, that's how busy it has become.

In the end we had a pint beforehand and eventually settled in for lunch later on, to start a braised beef risotto with a horseradish foam providing a nice contrast, my veggie companion was probably happy with something goats cheese and colleage had some good looking mussels.

Mains were two sirloins with bearnaise, chips, onion rings and breaded mushroom, the latter(s) coming as standard with the mains, i must saw given the numbers they were doing i was half expecting a steak disaster but no, they came very well cooked. I requested med/rare which seems to give a better than average chance of what i want-nice crust on the outside, rare in the middle, can't be doing with sous-vide-esque-uncaramelised meat nowadays. I noticed they also have little flags in the dishes to denote the cuisson also. Bearnaise was spot on , chips pretty good and onion rings home made and freshly battered , mushroom with a good garlic breadcrumb hit. Much more finesse that expected given the price £13.50 for the steak plus £1.50 sauce £3 chips in a town centre. veggie had good looking gnocchi dish.

didn't really need dessert but in for a penny.... jam roly poly, proper suet based dish, proper custard with visible vaniila seeds (and not ant eggs as someone once accussed us of having in a creme brulee at the pub)very good, can't remember the others, blame the ill advised strawberry beer i moved onto in norman's across the way.

some unremarkable aussy chardonnay and NZ pinot to wash it down.

will be nicely busy if anyone wants a pre-christmas meal, and can get in!