La Feria review: Harrogate restaurant's expertly roasted chicken still sumptuous
From its small beginnings in Harrogate, La Feria is now an established major player in its culinary scene and the roast chicken is as sumptuous as ever, says Jill Turton… not forgetting the tapas.
We’re at La Feria, the Andalucian-inspired tapas restaurant on Harrogate’s Cold Bath Road, which began as a tiny café on Royal Parade serving just one dish and is now a rambling restaurant with a dark, moody interior and a breezy terrace that seats up to 180.
But roll back to 2014 when Jez Verity was working as a charity fundraiser and, years before that, an actor. “A short-lived career,” he says with a laugh, though handy training for front-of-house. He was also enjoying lingering lunches in Cadiz where he has a holiday home. Who hasn’t come back from holiday and dreamed of opening a simple little tapas bar?
Most of us never follow the dream, but Verity did, and with no hospitality experience, took over an exclusive antique shop on Royal Parade, dressed it down with zinc-topped tables, vintage metal chairs, industrial lighting and put the name La Feria – the Fair – over the door. He was no chef, so was advised to keep it simple. It was so simple that he served only one dish – rotisserie chicken. Was he mad? With supermarket chickens as cheap as chips and Nando’s and KFC successfully doing their thing, nobody in their right mind would consider opening a proper restaurant serving nothing but chicken.
Turns out he wasn’t mad; it just took everyone else a long time to catch up. Over the last 18 months, a whole raft of rotisserie chicken spots has opened in London. Food blogger James Dimitri has clocked 33 across the capital from Stratford to Soho, Shoreditch to Mayfair. Edinburgh has the Keelson in Leith, and while the craze hasn’t hit Yorkshire in the same way, we have Ronda Rotisserie in Halifax and the Empire Café in Leeds with their fabulous ‘wall of flame rotisserie’.
Ten years before the current craze, Verity knew he was onto something. His free-range, Yorkshire chickens, marinated in oil and lemon juice, rubbed with spices and turned for 90 minutes on a rotisserie were flying out of the door. Served on a pretty Spanish plate, dripping in lemony juices they were as tender and succulent as good roast chicken can be.
Soon he was filling his six tables and doing three sittings a night. Everyone came. Mums and kids arrived early doors for an easy tea of chicken and chips. The Harrogate glitterati rocked up, charmed by its roughed-up attitude. He once took an order for 20 roast chickens for a children’s party. But with just 25 covers, this little chicken café was never going to hack it.
He was told you needed 70 covers to make a restaurant viable and so he went big, very big. He renovated, refurbished and extended a rambling pub on Cold Bath Road. He shipped in doors and tiles and shutters from Spain to recreate the dark little bars in Cadiz and shaped a casual, rustic interior. It went overnight from 25 covers to a whopping 90. He added a terrace and a glass-roofed canopy and doubled the size again.
No longer is it just roast chicken. He has created a menu of 15 tapas: crisp calamari, scorched and salty Padron peppers, chorizo in sherry, croquetas filled with Serrano ham and Manchego, pulpo a la gallega – octopus and potatoes dressed in olive oil, salt and paprika. It is as authentic as it gets in downtown Harrogate.
We order the albondigas, tender with a mix of pork and beef, pleasingly soft and smothered in a rich tomato broth. The obligatory patatas bravas are salty cubes with a touch of tomato sauce and a garlicky aïoli. Aubergine fritters would have benefited from a change of oil but were rescued by a drizzle of honey and a touch of balsamic. The best tapa is a round of baked goat’s cheese, given a startling, luminous orange sauce made from sweet red peppers and finished with crushed walnuts. Much tastier than it looks.
Naturally we order the half chicken (£11 half/£21 whole). Two fat pieces, the skin charred and browned, zinging with the spices of cumin and paprika, still drippy with juices and as good as ever.
Desserts have not strayed far from the little La Feria. Chocolate and churros, sherry trifle, and Annie’s orange and lemon cake, soaked in citrus juices and served with mascarpone. The Basque cheesecake is disappointing. A classic Basque cheesecake is a feather-light confection of cream and cheese without a crust and with a burnished top. Here was a regular baked cheesecake with a pastry base, dense and heavy. But proof that simple is often best comes with the PX vanilla ice cream, - three fat scoops - crowned with plump Pedro Ximénez-soaked raisins and a shot of the luscious, syrupy wine for good measure. The warming sherry, humming with the flavours of honey and dried fruit, contrasts with the cold vanilla ice cream. It’s brilliant.
Twelve years on and Jez Verity is justly proud that La Feria has survived so long, though it has not been without its difficulties, he says, reeling off Brexit, Covid, energy prices, and staff shortages as well as the everyday challenges of running a restaurant: the veg man is late, the fridge develops a leak.
Despite it all, La Feria are sending out crowd-pleasing dishes, sensibly priced - all the tapas are under a tenner. It’s a place you can take your kids, your grandma, the picky eaters, the veggies, the vegans and the gluten-free.
With such an extensive menu of tapas, it would be easy to overlook the roast chicken, but rotisserie chicken is where it all began. Verity was there well before the current hipster craze, with the foresight to see that simple, tender, well-spiced, expertly cooked roast chicken could be a thing. It seems it was not such a mad idea after all.
Ratings:
Welcome – 5/5
Food – 4/5
Atmosphere – 4/5
Prices – 5/5
Dinner for two with bottle wine and service approx. £100
La Feria, Wellington House, Cold Bath Road, Harrogate HG2 0NA
www.laferiarestaurants.co.uk