Swine Bistro, Headingley: 'From butties to a bistro' - I ate at the Yorkshire restaurant which hasn't forgotten its roots
It all began in a little cafe on a rundown street in Leeds for Jo and Stu Myers. Now that little pig has grown into a mighty porker. Jill Turton paid a visit to the newly opened Swine Bistro.
A grown-up restaurant is how Jo Myers describes the newly opened Swine Bistro that she runs with husband Stu.
It certainly has all the tropes of a grown-up restaurant: exposed brick walls, white tablecloths, mismatched chairs and an open kitchen.
On a Saturday evening and every table taken with chattering, happy diners, it couldn’t be more grown-up. Jo is beaming as if she can’t quite believe what is happening. ‘Look at this’ she says, spreading her arms, ‘and we’ve only been open three weeks’.
Nor can she take seriously the fact that shy, taciturn Stu has been elevated to Executive Chef.
Such grandeur hardly fits the couple who, for the last dozen years, have been running a tiny restaurant with a basement kitchen that began as a sandwich shop with no toilet before mutating into a charming, but basic little restaurant on the wrong side of Leeds’ city centre traffic loop.
In 2012, Stu and Jo Myers took on a little caff on cheerless North Street. It was all they could afford. The Greedy Pig provided piggy things like Scotch eggs, sausage rolls and all-day breakfasts, a sort of quality greasy spoon.
It got them started and social media got them noticed. A few years on, they upgraded to a restaurant, The Pig became The Swine.
The Swine that Dines had 16 covers, one oven and one griddle and from there they produced buttermilk chicken, ox tongue, venison faggots, peanut butter cheesecake and lemon meringue pie. They ran pie nights and veggie weeks, endorsed nose-to-tail eating and BYO, all at rock-bottom prices.
The pandemic nearly finished them, but they got through by doing takeaways and battled on, dreaming of a bigger, better kitchen, more tables, and a new location.
Now that dream has come true in a former hair salon in suburban Headingley, thanks to a crowdfunding appeal that raised £42,000 in less than a month.
Kirsty Cheetham (from Queen o’ t’Owd Thatch) comes in as Head Chef with Stu as Executive Chef which must therefore make Jo the Mâitre d, a title the funny, irrepressible Jo would never call herself.
They may have upgraded significantly with space for a proper kitchen, a room (in time) for private dining and the magical number of 40 covers, but they have not abandoned their original ethos of simple, unfussy food from a menu that Stu will tweak with the seasons and change regularly.
To start you might want slices of cured salmon with a fennel and orange salad or a thick slab of chicken and pork terrine and grape chutney or maybe new season asparagus with a gribiche sauce, (a refined tartar sauce), and only Stu Myers can make a dish of pureed butter beans look (and taste) elegant, loading it with peas, mange tout, mint and pea shoots, then studding it with ricotta and adding a little moat of lemon oil.
Their short menu only has room for one veggie main, which is a pie.
Famed for their pies at the old Swine, this one is cheese, onion and potato with a mustard vinaigrette and broccoli. I’m forced to pass on it in favour of Stu’s ragu.
Don’t confuse this ragu with the mince you put into your spag bol. This is pork knuckle and slices of fennel, cooked long and slow, collapsing into a mess of shredded, succulent, porky richness.
It sits on top of a finger of grilled polenta and Parmesan and is a superb and fitting tribute to this restaurant’s swine credentials.
Thrilled that they now have a grill, they offer bavette steak, a cheaper, thinly sliced cut of beef that cooks quickly on a hot grill with more chew than fillet steak and with more flavour.
On the side, a dish of new potatoes, boiled, then bashed, then cooked to a crisp in beef fat, even allowing them to burn in parts and all the better for that. They are so good, I’m requesting them now as a stand-alone dish.
The Swine’s signature belly pork is on the menu, and proof he can do elegant, a refined fillet of crisp-skinned sea bream and spring vegetables in a sauce of crème fraiche.
Jo and development chef Paul Bullock, collaborate on the puddings. No lemon meringue pie. A Jo signature, offered as a reward in their crowdfunding appeal that had so many takers, I believe she is still fulfilling the orders.
Happily, there is a perfectly wobbly custard tart accompanied by Earl Grey-soaked prunes and a rich flourless (I’m guessing), intensely chocolatey, chocolate torte or a subtle and lovely honey cake, topped with finely crushed almond brittle and burnt milk cremeaux, all of them flawless.
Prices are still low in the current climate, with starters £9 – £11 and mains £19 – 28 with a bargain Saturday lunch at £22.50.
Homely, hospitable, relaxed and casual is how Stu Myers described his style when I interviewed him for this paper during lockdown.
It is all this, of course, but this modest chef undersells himself; his dishes are always considered and beautifully composed and worthy of any top-end restaurant.
The Myers have come a long way since the Greedy Pig, their little caff on North Street.
Back then, they decided to spend what little cash they had, not on new signage and a change of name, but on a decent coffee machine. It says much about their priorities, which have always been to offer good food (and good coffee) without pomp or pretention and with a lot of joy.
They may have got stuck with the name, but it has served them well. From bacon butty days to today’s lovely Swine Bistro they have gone the whole hog and delivered Headingley a proper grown-up restaurant.
Welcome 5/5
Food 5/5
Atmosphere 5/5
Prices 5/5
Price: £120 Dinner for two including bottle of wine and service.
Swine Bistro 77a Otley Road, Headingley LS6 3PS Open: Wed-Sat 1200-1500 & 1730-2200
www.swinethatdines.co.uk