No 3 York Place, 3 York Place, Leeds (0113 245 9922).
Meal for two, with wine and service, £120
A Friday in Leeds and four men gather for lunch. These men like their food, are tourists of the plate, and will travel great distances to give a new restaurant the once-over. It would be fair, therefore, to assume a certain spirit of adventure when they hit the menu. Except men like these are oddly predictable and so, when presented with the choices at No 3 York Place, they all gravitate towards the same bloody things. We managed only two main courses between us, though that's my fault, too. I wasn't prepared to give up the pig's trotter either.
No 3 is understated flash: white walls, blond floors, leather banquettes, with a glass vault in the ceiling to bring in the light. Ditto the food: it is big and French and it reads intricately on the menu, but on the plate it makes sense. And that pig's trotter is, to me, the place where the West Riding meets Le Terroir. Pricing is also in keeping with its location, in that you can both crash the plastic until it smoulders - a spectator sport in Leeds - and get a bargain. The lunchtime menu costs £14.50 for two courses, and includes the likes of a pigeon and duck terrine to start, and baked cod with a brioche crust and chive risotto to follow.
We, though, were big boys on a mission to lunch, and went for the carte with starters at around £10 and mains in the teens. So there were poached oysters, with a spool of noodles below, and a generous spoonful of caviar on top, dressed with a sweet and sour sauce - which was a lighter broth, punched up with tamarind, than that phrase suggests. Scallops came seared with a cauliflower puree - curiously, this season's must-have ingredient - and a sparing amount of a tart caper dressing. There was also a terrine of smoked mackerel, which suggested a willingness to use the cheap but tasty ingredients. I didn't get to try it but it looked pretty.
And then those main courses, including (deep breath): braised pig's trotter stuffed with ham hock, black pudding and chicken mousseline, potato puree, buttered spinach, ragout of baby onions, fumet of truffles. It was, I think, like one of those pointillist pictures which makes no sense close up, but every sense at a distance. The mousseline became merely a meaty medium in which the ham and black pudding were held, encased in the comforting envelope of wobbly skin. The potato provided starch, the rest a dressing. The same applied with honey roast wood pigeon, sausage of foie gras, chicken and truffle, caramelised peaches, sarladaise potatoes (cooked in duck fat with bacon) and a jus of thyme. The sausage played the same part as the trotter stuffing, the beautifully soft peaches a foil. We finished with two leaking chocolate fondants and, for me, a blackberry souffle which was beyond reproach. If there is a criticism it is that the kitchen seemed in no particular hurry to get our dishes to the table, but that should not obscure the quality of what eventually arrived.
That evening I went to Sheffield to interview the sainted Jamie Oliver before an audience of 1,000 people, a large crowd which should indicate a growth of interest in good food. And yet later, surprised by the return of hunger, I ordered a BLT at the Marriott Hotel in Netheredge. It was gruesome, both flaccid and tasteless. I thought wistfully of my pig's trotter and suddenly felt guilty for finishing a day that, gastronomically, had begun so well with this evil little plateful.
