I am definitely a late starter with tasting menus, and now that I am gluten and milk free – I am not the easiest person to cater for.
Thankfully, a few weeks ago, this all changed when I bought my husband a meal for his birthday at The Swine That Dines on North Street in Leeds and I am really excited to write this blog post, because it was glorious.
There are only about seven tables, so we pre-booked and were glad we did. On the form it asked about dietary requirements so I filled it in. I received a phone call a few days before asking if I could eat meat. I said, “I most definitely can,” which I think went down well on this occasion. I always say, if I didn’t eat meat on top of the rest of my dietary requirements, things would be pretty tough indeed.
I chatted to Jo, one of the owners, and she told me that there are four of them in total and they can cater for most dietary requirements with a bit of warning. From doing a bit of reading, Jo and her husband, Stuart, set up the restaurant in 2018. Previously, they ran a successful cafe called The Greedy Pig.
They are an excellent choice for vegetarians and vegans as they do a vegetarian menu for the first week of every month and can adapt most things to vegan.
So, let me tell you about my experience…
The venue is really chilled out, not pretentious at all and it has a really nice atmosphere.
There are even pigs (AKA swines) looking down at you which is nice and fitting…
When we arrived, Jo chatted with the chef. They then highlighted on the menu which dishes I could have. Jo made me feel totally at ease which was lovely, as so often you feel like a pain in the butt when you are difficult to cater for.
There was a whopping eight choices possible for me and if I wasn’t coeliac and could tolerate foods being cooked in the same fryer, there would have been an additional two. Woo hoo!
They recommend three to four dishes each. We had two each and then shared another two. It was a taste sensation. So, sooooo good. I savoured every mouthful. The presentation was beautiful with every dish – so many colours.
After perusing the menu for a little while, I chose the following…
This was so tasty. The duck goes so nicely with the fig and I have never tried duck prepared in that way. They dropped the buttermilk from this for me so that it was dairy free.
Cooked cucumber! Who knew?! It was delicious. And I have no idea what they did to the mussels – they tasted a little chargrilled. Whatever it was, they were out of this world.
And probably most surprising for me were the potatoes, tomato, coriander and peas – Jo described them as their take on Bombay potatoes. Again, they were absolutely delicious. We had these with the pork belly, turmeric, cabbage and poppy seed. It was the best pork belly I have ever had – crackling on the top and really tender meat.
It’s very unusual for me to find a dessert anywhere, but they did offer me the apple cake. I was never one to order desserts really pre-diagnosis though and was perfectly happy with our savoury feast.
Another amazing thing (can you tell I really like this place?) was that you can take your own booze and pay for corkage. This keeps the cost down dramatically if you like a tipple or two like us. You can probably tell from the next photo…
And talk about a fair price – I paid £59 for both of us in total. I would say that is amazing, wouldn’t you? I would highly recommend this place to anyone that likes tasting menus.