Highland Laddie, Leeds: 'I ate at the new Yorkshire restaurant bringing the traditional British boozer into the 21st century'
Jill Turton lunches in amongst the student high rises at the Highland Laddie in Leeds and enjoys an experience that famous author George Orwell himself would have been truly delighted with.
In 1946, George Orwell wrote an essay describing his perfect pub. It must be in a quiet spot down a side street, the inside should have ‘the solid, comfortable ugliness of the 19th century’.
It will have a fire in the grate in winter, be quiet enough to talk, and serve a good, solid lunch upstairs.
This fictitious pub he called the Moon Under Water –without irony, it’s the name given to several Wetherspoon branches.
Orwell could be describing the Highland Laddie, a Victorian red brick wedge, tucked away behind the fire station on Cavendish Street, a side street off Kirkstall Road in Leeds.
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Back in the day, the Highland was a much-loved locals’ boozer and, being close to the Yorkshire Television studios, the go-to pub for the film editors and the graphic design department, who claimed Walt’s beer was far better than anything served in the company bar.
Time passed, and high-rise student accommodation sprang up all around, swamping the little Highland.
The students didn’t frequent this old man’s pub very much, and come the holidays, they packed up and headed home with their washing.
The lack of customers, along with a continual rise in beer prices, finally did for the Highland. On 30 April 2023, they invited regulars to drink the barrels dry.
Enter Sam Pullan and Nicole Deighton, who had saved a greasy spoon caff in Leeds city centre to create the Empire Café. Could they breathe new life into a dying boozer in a hard-to-find location?
They took back its original name of Highland Laddie and carried out a gentle upgrade, keeping the original Tetley’s wood panelled bar, the brass foot rail, the buttoned banquettes and the round pub tables.
They darkened the walls and painted the ceiling oxblood red, added rich red curtains and frilly glass lamps to give the bar a pleasant warmth, then added an oyster bar.
What was the ‘best room’ now serves as the dining room. With its black walls, old Tetley’s pub sign, and a wood-burning stove, fulfilling Orwell’s demand for ‘a good fire in winter’.
The menu features 20 small plates for sharing – a mix of comfort and adventure. Who puts lobster stock into sweet Madelaines and serves them warm with chorizo butter? Or pairs butterflied sardines with pork trotter gravy?
Toasted black pudding, fennel jam and prunes are served with, wait for it, Maida Vale. They tell me it’s a rind-washed cheese from Guernsey.
Smoked Shetland mussels sit atop a hunk of bread that’s bathed in a rich, brick-red, langoustine bisque with enough of the soft, bouncy dough to soak up the shellfish essence and wipe the plate clean.
Pullan and chef Joe Carroll pull off these slightly wacky dishes brilliantly, but that doesn’t stop them from doing the simple stuff as well.
For the gastronomically timid, there’s a sausage roll where juicy sausage meat meets crisp, burnished, puff pastry falling into buttery, flaky shards as you bite.
It comes with its own fruity brown sauce, which our waiter exuberantly tries to blag his way towards its provenance before dashing off to the kitchen to confirm it’s made with fruit, booze and spice.
Remember devilled eggs, here enlivened with curry spices, or there’s a plate of thickly sliced ham, served with soft plump rolls, yellow butter and mustard.
The ham, Pullan says, is a tribute to his grandad’s old working men’s club in Gateshead.
“They would sink 12 pints before ladies would emerge from the kitchen with piles of ham sandwiches to mop up the booze.”
Here it’s sliced from a ham joint, roasted over coals and served with a choice from their ‘mustard menu’. Pommery Moutarde Royale with Cognac, anyone?
Prices start at £3 for the devilled egg, £4 for an oyster, the rest around £11.
Prices peak at £23 for pork schnitzel, but that’s a big, main-course schnitzel, darkly crusted and still sizzling from the deep-fat fryer and given two fried eggs the runny yolk acting as the sauce. Anchovies for a salty hit are optional.
There is no room for pudding, but we order one anyway. The Yorkshire Tea ice cream sandwich with Horlicks cream is, along with some floppy chips, the only duff note, in an otherwise terrific meal.
The disc of chocolate-covered biscuit is hard to break into, even when we’re told to pick it up and eat it like a sandwich.
The cream spills out, and while the Horlicks cream is good, the Yorkshire tea is strong and bitter.
Saoirse McLaughlin is the pastry chef for both Laddie and Empire.
Don’t judge her by this Horlicks sandwich (and there are Facebook fans who love it), because she does so much else that is fabulous: the soft bread rolls, the puff pastry and desserts like the re-imagined Black Forest gateau with its cherry-liqueur-soaked sponge and the lamb fat lardy cake with roasted grapes, cheese and honey.
We drink a couple of pints of their own Laddie Lager and a guest brew of Amity Albion from the Sunny Bank Mill brewery in Farsley, kept in condition by manager Alex Holmes, who runs the relaxed and amiable front-of-house team.
The Laddie marooned among the high-rise flats feels a bit like that lonely farm on the M62 that’s trapped between the eastbound and westbound carriageways.
Hidden it may be, but this hasn’t stopped Leodians from finding it. Students occasionally pop in to take a photo for TikTok, then dash home for an early night. They don’t know what they’re missing.
Under the inspired direction of Sam and Nicole, the Highland Laddie looks to be in safe hands, a young couple bringing the traditional British boozer into the 21st century. George Orwell would have loved it.
Welcome 5/5
Food 4.5/5
Atmosphere 5/5
Prices 5/5
The Highland Laddie, 36-38 Cavendish Street, Leeds, LS3 1LY highlandladdie.com. Dinner for two £110 including beer and service.