Headrow House

Superlatives. It’s so easy to fall back them when waxing the ol’ lyrical on your new fave place. Even more so when you’re trying to explain the joy of discovering a new steak-​heaven, but that’s poor, lazy writing, so I won’t. I’ll try and do what I encourage others to do, and find a more engaging way to tell you how this steaksteaksteaksteak –sorry, this place– is game-​changing.
Forget it – it’s all about the steak. And I just… I *need* to throw the word «best» in there somewhere.
BEST.
Shit. I, I really tried. BEST. There I go again.
*Counts to ten. Deep breaths.*
Headrow House is another of Leeds’ new trend-​hangs — it fits the appropriate formula. (I mean, these guys created the formula with Belgrave, so. Fair.) That is, it’s got several floors (bar/​resto downstairs, middle floor for music events, and roof terrace for those three days of sunshine we can look forward to. (Cheap shot, we all know it’s bitter oop north.)
There are Urquell copper flasks/​flagons/​tanks/​stills as big –if not bigger– than me downstairs. They turn the lighting down as soon as it gets dark, which makes me angry because I like to see what I’m doing/​eating/​drinking. The music is always great. Why not five stars? Because the lighting and I want a plate and a steak knife so I can cut my food efficiently, and I personally get rather irked by almost-​darkness in bars. Have done for years.
Anyway, let’s get back to the real issue, which would be that steak I love so much.
For a tenner you can get what I think is a mini steak frites; essentially, you get a steak and chips in a box with sorrel or some such. It. Is. DELICIOUS. The chimichurri (?) sauce on it is incredible, the steak has consistently been cooked to perfection –medium-​rare on the rare side– and the chips… well. Who doesn’t love fries? During the week, you’ll get a glass of red to go with on that deal.
Enough ramble. Shutup and order some meat.

I would never have found Headrow House if I hadn’t been led there. It’s down a lane just off the Headrow in Leeds city. Inside the main bar area is pretty huge and it looks like there are more rooms elsewhere — I suspect it would be an idea place to go for drinks with a big group.
They have a good range of beers on tap (and beer really is the focus here), some of which are apparently brewed in the larger copper vessels within the bar area itself. They also have quite a decent menu o bar snacks. I ordered a box dog, which turned out to be a deconstructed hot dog with slices of two different sausages, some pickles, potaoes and slices of toasted baguette, all drizzled in ketchup and mustard. It was delicious.

Cheesy as it sounds i reckon this is the place that’s going to be the place to be. (All explained below).
Firstly, they haven’t finished it yet. Now for the most part it has that slightly industrial, unfinished look anyway but on our visit there was an entire floor out of commission.
We were invited to the opening. I say invited, i sense someone probably paid a little money for our free tickets. That being said we got a free drink with out ticket and food on the night was free too.
The club is still getting itself together, toilets weren’t complete on the ground floor but watch this space, they were building fast, even when we were there.
There’s a greaat selection of beers. Some quite pricey by my standard but the average pint price seemed to be around the £4 mark (which i guess is usual these days, i don’t know).
The food was really nice, i hope they keep the terrace bar open for your regular nights. The gig space was ok. Nice outdoor seating area. A little echo-​y but that could juts be because it wasn’t finished.
I really liked the space, it seemed to fit a lot of folk without too much trouble. The staff were all ace and last but by no means least. For our night at least, it was full of my sort of people. We didn’t see fights or crossed words, none of the «tigertiger» mentality at all. I guess you could level the criticism «hipster» at it but i find hipsters much more fun than scumbags so i’m happy. (Quick qualifyer here, going to tigertiger does not make you a scumbag, it makes you a patron of the type of bar that attracts them. You can see them, they’re the kind of people who think tracksuits are going out clothes and a bacardi breezer is a sophisticated drink.
But that’s not related to Headrow now is it. Go and see for yourself. I hope the only things that have changed since my visit was the paints dried and the plumbings finished. Then its perfect. :-)