Leeds has so many places to eat and because we have a few favourites, it’s easy to get caught up going to the same ones and not trying anything new. I actually stumbled across The Bird and the Beast on Twitter, and liked the look of the menu, plus the fact that all the chickens were local, free range and organic kinda cinched it for me, so I booked a table for my post graduation meal with my family. It’s located in the city centre, just tucked away behind Debenhams.
Inside, it’s a quirky wooden canteen warehouse restaurant hybrid, which sounds weird but it’s cute. To the left of the floor is the bar, complete with a small kitchen (aka grill and rotisserie chicken) on display. The menu isn’t extensive, there’s the main menu which has your choice of quarter (£5), half (£8.50) or whole (£15.50) chicken, with sides like coleslaw, sweet potato wedges etc, as well as a decent drinks menu (including their own beer) and a cute desert menu. There was a lunchtime menu available with a few different versions of chicken burgers (alongside fries and slaw) for £7.50.
I ordered the beer battered chicken goujon burger, with sweet potato wedges instead of fries, my boyfriend ordered the same with fries, and my dad and sister ordered the chicken fillet burger with fries. Normally with lunch menus, you only get a small amount so when the waitress came over four stacked plates I was really surprised. You literally couldn’t fit any more food on it!
Basically (I’m not always sure how restaurant reviews should go!) the food was delicious. The battered goujons were crispy, tasty and the chicken inside was moist and delicious. The bun was fresh, same with the salad inside, and had a gorgeous mayo kind of sauce inside. The coleslaw was amazing! It was chunky and tasty and went really well with the chicken. My sweet potato wedges were absolutely huge, there was only three but it was pretty much the size of a whole sweet potato, and you could see the char marks where they had been freshly chargrilled. I tried a few of the chips as well and they were lovely, they had a sort of spice coating that wasn’t spicy, but gave it a smoky flavour.
Afterwards, we got some ice cream. I went for maple and praline, and everyone else went for salted caramel. Rather than traditional ice cream, the ice cream served was Greedy Goats – goats milk ice cream served in little tubs. Mine was delicious, it was a plain ice cream swirled with crunchy praline and maple bits, and I tried the salted caramel which was really nice, but very sickly sweet.
I understand in a world of Nandos, you might think there isn’t space for a new chicken place, but to be honest Nandos is very overrated, very standard and nothing special. I LOVE the fact that Bird and Beast uses free range, local and organic chickens. Yes, I may still eat meat but I do prefer that animals get the best quality of life. I also prefer supporting local businesses, it’s not much but little things like that make the world go round so next time you fancy a Nandos try checking this out instead. They even have Nandos sauces in the condiments so if you really need your Nandos craving filled, you can do!
On a similar note, I think I’m going to make a list of all the restaurants in Leeds I want to try, and then make sure I tick them all off! What are some restaurants you’ve enjoyed recently?
