La Piola, Leeds: 'I visited a self-styled café bistro in Yorkshire - and had my very own Ratatouille moment'

Going to a gig or watching a football match can be a memorable experience, but only food truly appeals to all of our main senses.

It’s like the scene near the end of Ratatouille where (spoiler alert) the hard-nosed food critic Anton Ego (wonderfully voiced by the late Peter O’Toole), bites into the titular dish and experiences an epiphany that takes him back to his childhood and his mother’s cooking.

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There’s something about food that can transport us to another time and place – whether it is Sunday dinners growing up, or a beachfront Greek taverna with the waves gently lapping at your feet.

I only bring this up because I had one of these ‘moments’ during a recent visit to La Piola, a self-styled café bistro in the centre of Leeds.

It was triggered by a giant photo on one of the walls. The picture in question was of a hillside town that took me right back to a holiday in Tuscany more than a decade ago, and a pizza shack outside San Gimignano.

For less than 20 euros my wife and I quaffed a bottle of local plonk and had some of the tastiest pizza I can remember – all while sitting on plastic white chairs beneath a cheap-looking brolly and looking out onto sun-kissed rolling hills peppered with olive trees and cypresses.

Now, Leeds isn’t Italy and La Piola doesn’t have a view of rolling Tuscan hills. In fact, this basement restaurant on Park Square doesn’t have much of a view at all. Not that it needs one.

La Piola has been going for nearly four years now. Owner Fabio Rua originally launched it as a daytime coffee shop and deli, but such was its popularity he expanded it into a full evening restaurant.

It was a smart move. Having somewhere that has lunchtime customers and can also pull in punters on an evening, means you’re probably onto a winner.

Park Square with its pretty, well maintained public square and stately Georgian buildings has become a popular film location in recent years (the likes of Bank of Dave and Gentleman Jack were partly filmed here).

It’s also home to many top legal firms and barristers, but it’s hardly the beating heart of the Leeds food scene.

And yet La Piola’s popularity proves that location isn’t everything (despite what Kirstie and Phil might say).

There is a homely, unpretentious feel to the place and despite the fact that some of the tables are on the cosy side you don’t feel that you’re sitting cheek by jowl with your fellow diners, which I have done in bigger spaces than this.

The food, as you probably guessed, is all about Italy. Or more precisely Cuneo, a city in the northern Piedmont region, with an unapologetic emphasis on the rural and rustic.

From the starters list, which includes bruschetta, arancini, salads and sharing boards, we went for the mushroom and truffle arancini along with the burrata and Parma ham salad.

The arancini were a tad too crispy for me, though the filling delivered on those delicious umami flavours.

The salad was a generous, Yorkshire-sized portion that could easily be shared.

Quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality, though here the succulent, sweet ham and rich, creamy burrata worked in happy harmony, proving you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when you have ingredients as good as this.

If the starters showed promise, the main courses went up a notch.

There’s an inviting choice of pizzas, pastas and a strangely labelled ‘meals’ section, which includes a tempting-sounding braised shoulder of lamb medallions with garlic potatoes and sugo (a traditional tomato sauce).

In the end we opted for a couple of pasta dishes – orecchiette sugo d’anatra, slow cooked duck with sugo and a touch of chilli, and pappardelle salsiccia e funghi, an Italian sausage and mushroom ragù, cooked with red wine and tomato.

Both were delightful, moreish and a masterclass in how to take seemingly simple ingredients and turn them into something more than the sum of their parts.

We finished by sharing a limoncello tartufo, which was an unexpected delight.

I say ‘unexpected’ because I’m always a little wary of limoncello – the result of too many fluorescent yellow shots better suited to a dental surgery, brought over by over-enthusiastic restaurant owners at the end of an already booze-soaked evening.

This was nothing like that. The limoncello flavour was dialled down, balancing nicely with the creamy lemon centre and the hint of sherbet from the outer casing that took me back to ‘Friday tuck shop’ at my primary school. (See, I told you).

It was the perfect note on which to finish – like the sound of a lid closing on a box, to misappropriate WB Yeats.

The service was warm, welcoming and attentive and the final bill for two, including service and a bottle of Primitivo, came in at £105, which represents very good value for what we ate.

You would hope a barmy Friday evening would bring people in. But it doesn’t always work like that.

Good weather can be both a kiss and curse for restaurants – I’ve spoken to owners in the past left with near-empty dining rooms after punters either cancelled or simply didn’t turn up for their booking.

Thankfully, there was none of that here, with a steady stream of customers coming and going throughout the evening.

Great food doesn’t need to be expensive or come with a fancy foam – if the ingredients are good and cooked with care, and if the atmosphere bubbles along like a glass of nicely chilled prosecco, it can be just as memorable as any Michelin-starred tasting menu.

Welcome 4/5

Food 4/5

Atmosphere 5/5

Prices 5/5

La Piola, 2 Park Square East, Leeds. LS1 2NE. www.lapiolaleeds.co.uk