Anthony's at Flannels,
68 Vicar lane, Leeds,
(0113 242 8732)
Lunch for two, including wine and service, £70
I wanted to love this week's restaurant. To be fair, it's not as if I usually troll about the country looking for restaurants to hate. Lunch in Britain is more than enough of a crap shoot already without actively seeking out, well, the crap. But with Anthony's at Flannels I was what therapists call 'emotionally invested'. Partly it's the city. I was a student in Leeds and a piece of me remains there. I like to think it's the callow, boastful, overcompensating piece, but it's still there all the same. I always want to think well of this city because it gifted me so much.
More importantly there is the Flinn family, which runs this brasserie on the top floor of a self-consciously funky fashion store in the city centre. I can think of few new restaurants which have attracted such a surge of affection and downright wet-knickered fandom as the original Anthony's when it first opened on Boar Lane in 2004. It was, I think, as much down to the audacity of the venture as its deliciousness. A very young chef with a bit of El Bulli experience behind him had, with the backing of his family, launched a truly brave restaurant serving intriguing food. His white onion risotto with 'Parmesan air' atop a slick of bitter coffee may sound odd but it eats beautifully, as do so many of his other dishes. There was surprise when Michelin refused to bestow a star in Anthony's first year, surprise which has gone through stages of anger and outrage to head-scratching, as the tyre company has continued to snub them.
It must have hurt Anthony Flinn, who is an ambitious man; he once told me during an interview that he would either get three stars 'or die trying'. But to his credit, and that of his dad, sister and girlfriend, who all work with him, he has knuckled down to business. As well as the original Anthony's there is a patisserie in one of the grand covered arcades, and this place at Flannels. This year, when Michelin ignored Flinn again, I decided to eat here as an act of support. It is an elegant, echoey space in the rafters of the building, marked out by huge wood beams and big white walls hung with modern art for sale, and a flood of Yorkshire light.
It is the Flinn family proving their restaurant professionalism, which is why I wanted to love it, and why the faults disappoint me. These were most obvious in the main courses, so I'll get them out of the way, allowing me to move on to the positives. Unlike at Anthony's, this is brasserie food: simple dishes predicated on big flavours and faultless execution. Except it wasn't faultless. Two pieces of calf's liver were fine, the innards just the right side of pink, but it lacked any outside char. Worse still was the bacon, which needed to be crisp and here was flaccid. All the elements were present, it simply hadn't been finished. A dish of sea bream with fennel and potatoes was dull and dry. It needed something to lubricate it. My companion made a valiant attempt but couldn't bring himself to finish it.
There were other weaknesses. A truly appalling side dish of undercooked carrots with cumin brought back school-dinner nightmares. Some fishcakes were good on smoked salmon flavour but too heavy on potato. To finish there was an under-reduced slick of balsamic vinegar with a Bakewell tart. Cook balsamic down long enough and it can edge towards toffee, undercut by notes of crisp green apples. This remained defiantly something for the salad bowl.
But there were still flashes of brilliance. Their trademark Parmesan butter, which I first tried at Anthony's, was as good as ever. Some crisp, greaseless cauliflower tempura with a thick curried cauliflower veloute was both soothing and a punch of flavour, a culinary iron fist in a velvet glove. The vinegar may have been misjudged but it was a very fine Bakewell tart, while a baked New York cheesecake was also a fine and light specimen (which real baked New York cheesecakes so rarely are. They usually have their own discernible gravitational field).
How to explain all this? My suspicion is that they are trying to do too much for not enough money. While there is an all-day menu of salads and sandwiches, lunch is the main event, and I suspect the £18.25 they charge for three courses is forcing them to cut corners. If so, it's a crying shame, because this lot are capable of so very much better.
