Restaurant Review: The Food Academy at Flannels, Vicar Lane, Leeds

Surprisingly there’s nothing on the menu or the signage to explain that it’s run by the college and that these are students working towards their NVQ level 3. Perhaps they want it that way – to be treated as a proper grown-up restaurant – but anyone not in the know might not have given the benefit of the doubt.

But if there are creases to iron out in the kitchen, there is no arguing with the location – the gorgeous beamed and white attic space above Flannels, the posh clothes store on Vicar Lane. It used to be Anthony at Flannels and looks much as it did then: wooden floorboards, tall windows, a bar running the length and a changing exhibition of contemporary art on its white walls. What student wouldn’t be pleased to be given his first job here? And if the starched white tablecloths have given way to wooden tables, there are still the cool leather dining chairs and white linen napkins. It was always a soothing retreat from city centre shopping – it still is.

As in Anthony’s day, the Food Academy serves breakfast, brunch and lunch but not evening meals. The menu starts the day with porridge or eggs benedict and the like, goes on to fish and chips, burgers, sandwiches, “grazing plates” and afternoon tea. There is also a more ambitious three course set menu, £15 for two courses, £18 for three, which we went for. Decent off-the-peg wine list. Bread rolls.

Memo to manager Becky Price. Please tell your students to take the butter for the bread rolls out of the fridge earlier. It was virtually unspreadable.

The set menu admirably steps out of the comfort zone and pushes the bar a little higher than your average modern British menu, a welcome attempt at offering something more challenging with dishes like “textures of aged lamb”, or chestnut apple, crispy kale and watercress salad. “Textures of aged lamb” sounded interesting and ambitious. Too ambitious as it turned out. It was off. What, at 12.45pm? “It’s the first day of the new menu and the kitchen haven’t got it ‘prepped’ it in time,” we were told. Hmm.

What about chestnut apple then? Not a newly discovered apple variety, but a comma-phobic menu writer. Memo 2: your waiters shouldn’t have to scurry back to the kitchen to discover what it was. We went for it anyway. The chestnut was a nod to the season, but while the purple purée didn’t look especially appealing and was dense and cloying, the apple did its job of adding sharpness. The winning ingredient was the kale, dark green, deep fried sprigs, bringing a lovely crispness to the plate. As Greg might say on Masterchef: “I could take more of that.”

Our other starter of vodka-cured cod was way, way too salty, and I like salt. Delicious potato latkes, the soft boiled quail’s egg and the pickled vegetables just about made up for the fish but someone should have tasted it before it crossed the pass.

At mains, we settled for the sea bass fillet and spiced cauliflower and pumpkin, spinach and pearl barley tart. The tart’s pastry was textbook: golden, short, thin and crisp. But I couldn’t identify the pumpkin and, while I love pearl barley, I’m not convinced it works piled high in a pastry case, though it was helped by slices of just-melting goat’s cheese. The sea bass was accurately cooked and well matched with some gently spiced cauliflower, the onion bhaji and a slick of mango purée brightened it all up.

Our desserts were big on lemon. Lemon parfait came with candied pineapple, a smear of coriander purée and passion fruit that turned out to be passion fruit jam. It passed muster. Less sure about their signature dish “duck egg and soldiers” a duck egg shell holding what might have been lemon curd with soft meringue peeping out of the top. It was a lovely idea, nicely presented, but tooth-achingly sweet. A side portion of something grainy and pink, dried raspberry maybe, was so minute it was impossible to tell what it was or what it was for. Beside the egg in a small pot was a cream affair called “a taste of lemon” which had cunningly lost a taste of real lemon somewhere along the way. The dipping soldiers were top-notch, sugary little shortbread fingers. For good measure there was a fifth item on the plate, a warm financier cake. The sum of the parts, I fear, did not add up to a coherent whole.

Like the duck egg and the curate’s egg, the Food Academy was good in parts. Maybe we were unlucky to hit on them on the day the menu changed. We sensed some stress in the kitchen. But what we did admire in these young chefs was a sense of adventure, with a creative menu that was attempting originality and a range of cooking techniques. There’s some obvious talent at play. If a high wire act means sometimes falling off and at times they did, well, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. They’ll get better.

The Food Academy at Flannels, Vicar Lane, Leeds LS1 7JH. 0113 243 4898, www.foodacademyleeds.co.uk. Open: Tues-Sat 10am-4pm, Sunday 11am-4pm Price: the three course set lunch is £18. Coffee and service is extra.