Cinnamon Kitchen, Leeds: 'I ate at Vivek Singh's new restaurant inside Leeds' Art Deco masterpiece - it combines good food and cultural heritage'
Cinnamon Kitchen Leeds is renowned chef Vivek Singh’s first restaurant in the North of England. It’s also a welcome addition to the burgeoning Indian food scene here, writes Chris Bond.
When The Queens Hotel opened back in 1937, I doubt whether many of its well-heeled clientele had ever heard of lamb rogan josh or chicken tikka masala, never mind tasted one.
These days, of course, they are as much a part of our culinary heritage as fish and chips and roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
This Art Deco masterpiece with its distinctive white façade was more than just a flagship hotel for Leeds train station, it became a symbol of the city’s prestige, as evidenced by the glittering list of names that have been here over the years, including Princess Grace of Monaco, Cary Grant, Laurel and Hardy, and Nelson Mandela.
As a young reporter I interviewed Marc Almond here, though only after we finally bumped into each other in one of its labyrinthine corridors having spent the previous 15 minutes trying separately to find the right room, in a scene that even the great Sir Alan Ayckbourn would have dismissed as beyond farce.
It’s not just famous names and flush rail passengers that have walked in through the doors of this splendid building.
Back in its pomp, the Queens was the place to go in Leeds if you wanted a posh afternoon tea, and a popular choice for those office Christmas parties and accompanying indiscretions under the mistletoe after one too many Baileys (or perhaps that was just me).
By the end of the noughties, though, the hotel had lost its lustre and was looking a little frayed around the edges, like a venerable actor who has seen better days.
That is until a £16m refurbishment in 2021 brought back the style and swagger which it made feel special in the first place.
Getting such a big hitter as Vivek Singh – the man behind London’s Cinnamon Club and something of a talisman for modern Indian cuisine in the UK – on board was quite a coup for Queens and the city, showing that Leeds still has pulling power in the culinary world after all the comings and goings of the past 12 months.
Singh has made his name over the past two decades by blending authentic South Asian flavours with top notch seasonal British ingredients.
It’s proved to be a winning formula and one he’s aiming to replicate at Cinnamon Kitchen Leeds.
Bradford might be the ‘curry capital’ of the North, but thanks to the likes of Bundobust, Tharavadu and Manjit’s Kitchen, among others, Leeds has a burgeoning reputation of its own when it comes to exciting Indian food with Cinnamon Kitchen, which opened in May, among its latest additions.
The open-plan restaurant, which has its own entrance leading onto City Square, certainly looks impressive, cleverly combining the hotel’s Art Deco heritage with a dining experience inspired by the first-class waiting rooms of 19th-century Indian railway stations.
The question is, does the food match the sumptuous surroundings? The answer is a resounding ‘yes.’
I tend to prefer Indian starters to the mains for the simple reason they are often more exciting, and both the Sofiani murg tikka (£10.50), succulent chicken breast with fennel and coriander, and the double-cooked Easingwold pork belly (£12), cooked ‘Koorg’ style with a medley of spices, were distinctive, deeply flavoured and, above all, delicious.
We followed this with lamb rogan josh shepherd’s pie (£18) and the Lucknowi chicken biryani (£16.50). Playing with popular classics is a bit risky but in the right hands the results can be memorable, as they were here.
The lamb was tender and the spicing just right, combining with the creamy mash to create a moreish take on an old favourite. The salt police might disapprove but for me the seasoning was just about right.
The star of the show was the chicken biryani with burhani raita. I’ve had oodles of biryanis over the years and I’m hard pushed to think of one as good as this.
The spicing on the perfectly cooked chicken was once again on the money and accompanied by a crispy naan (cooked in a tandoor oven) it was the kind of elevated comfort food that makes you feel happy to be alive.
I wasn’t going to have a dessert (I find Indian puds can be on the sweet side) but the Yorkshire style curd and cardamom tart with passion fruit sorbet (£7.25) proved too tempting.
And I’m glad I let temptation get the better of me because this was a delightful blend of East meets West cooking and a pitch-perfect note on which to finish.
It’s easy in plush surroundings like this for the service to be a bit OTT, but here the waiters got the balance right, managing to be friendly and attentive without coming across as obsequious.
The final bill for two, including four glasses of wine and service, came in at £117.84.
Some of you might baulk at this, but for the quality of the ingredients and the level of cookery skill on show I reckon it’s pretty good value.
My only note of reticence is to do with the atmosphere, or in this case the lack of it.
In my experience hotel restaurants can be funny places, but for a Friday night in Leeds you would expect somewhere like this to be buzzing and yet it was barely half full.
This may just have been down to the fact it was August when a lot of people are on their jollies.
I hope so, because when good food and cultural heritage come together like this they deserve a full house.
Welcome 4/5
Food 5/5
Atmosphere 3/5
Prices 4/5
Cinnamon Kitchen Leeds, The Queens Hotel, City Square, Leeds. LS1 1PJ. www.cinnamon-kitchen.com/leeds/ Tel: 0113 391 7411.