The Times
Jay Rayner visited a “great local restaurant” which opened last year in Horsforth on the northern edge of Leeds, from ex-Terroirs chef Sandy Jarvis and his general manager husband Clement Cousin.
“Its schtick is big, fat French classics, executed with vigour and a kind of precision that is so carefully disguised it just looks like the application of seriously good taste.”
Everything Jay ate hit the spot, providing a “glowing, middle-class Parisian Bistrot Paul Bert fantasy of French bourgeois life made real”.
Jay Rayner - 2025-06-01The Times
Camilla Long got down and dirty in a “warm, unmannered and unpretentious” bistro that “could only be more authentically French if it were run by hookers and/or resentful, silent elderly men”.
The cooking – from a locally born chef now returned from London – was “gorgeous, confident, surprising”, with a menu filled with “sturdy, noble dishes, whiffing mightily of the sea and the soil. All the best French food — and indeed, bistros — feel like this: a bit horny, a bit dirty, as if you’ve been truffling in the ground with your bare hands, like a hairy animal.”
The most interesting item began life as two separate dishes – a crab soufflé and a lobster bisque, now combined into a pungent, muddy, roux-based bisque, with a mop of fresh, silky fennel. Like the restaurant itself, it “came charmingly together. It felt relaxed, just right.”
Camilla Long - 2026-03-08
Drinks
Extras
