Friday date night and I’d suggested going to Crowd of Favours, the newest pub from the Leeds Brewery group on Harper Street near Kirkgate market. I’d read about it favourably since it’s opening and was anticipating good things.
For beer drinkers they have the usual Leeds brewery beers and were hosting beers from Magic Rock Brewing.
They had a short but succinct wine list and after a long week at school we certainly deserved some.
We decided on a German wine, it’s not that often that you find a decent German wine in a pub these days, except the usual Riesling etc, but we decided on a Niersteiner. We hadn’t a clue what it was but were eager to find out what it tasted like, I must say we were pleasantly surprised with it with lots of subtle floral notes to it. I especially tend to swear to dry white wines and even though this was certainly more of the medium spectrum it wasn’t too full bodied in terms of a medium white wine. It didn’t take along and we were both quaffing quite happily.
I grabbed a menu off the bar as we were both pretty ravenous, the menu is broken down into quirkily titled ‘Small favours’ such as soup, lamb kebab, ‘Large favours’ for example Nicoise salad, halloumi cheese and vegetable skewers, ‘A crowd of burgers’ and ‘Crowd pleasers’, such as their cheese fondue.
We both decided on their classic steak burger with all the trimmings. On such a warm afternoon the wine was definitely flowing nicely and when the burgers arrived it was like there was a silent fanfare in the background. It may have been because we were starving, but even I’ll admit that they looked pretty damn fine, and I’m not even the biggest burger fan.
Ok, now lets cut to the chase the burger…it tasted wonderful!!! The steak was juicy and moist, the smoked bacon cooked to perfection with crispy fat. The bun, if you’ve read any of my earlier blogs you’ll know I have a thing about the burger bun. Not to sound too Goldilocks-esque it was just right in terms of size, flavour and texture. The bun had a lovely neutral flavour so didn’t detract from the flavour of the meat, it had good charr marks and a fab crust. It was great to get a burger which didn’t have that sweaty exterior to it. The ketchup was tasty and the hand cut chips were a great partner. Still with the skins on and a decent chip size, not the silly overly large hand cut chips you often get these days. The burger was stacked with 2 onion rings, very yummy with thinly sliced onion coated in a light crisp batter, using Leeds Brewery’s very own pale ale. I left my pickled gherkin and chilli till last, they tasted fab too, in particular the gherkin which had just the right level piquancy. I struggled a little more with the chilli just due to the fact that I can be a little lame when it comes to heat. Now from the first bite, actually probably even before, if we had an ‘hmmm jar’, we would have raised a lot of money because we must have said it at least 20 times, we couldn’t stop singing its praises after every mouthful.
I’ll stop waxing lyrical about the food and get onto other important matters: service and cost. Service was really friendly and the cost was £40 for 2 adults. The place had a nice, relaxed feel about the place and lots of rooms scattered everywhere upstairs and downstairs. I’d definitely recommend going. The burgers alone were £10.50 each, not the cheapest, but I preferred it more than similar burgers I’ve had in Reds True BBQ and IT Bar.
Crowd of Favours Harper Street Leeds http://www.crowdoffavours.co.uk/
A Tale of Two Sittings 
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