Restaurant Reviews

Vinny & Vito – Village Hotel, North Leeds – Finding a tasty bite to eat that won’t break the bank can be tricky these days. In my experience, restaurants often tend to come in two categories: cheap and nasty or expensive and superb. Treating yourself to a meal can be a veritable minefield.

The Street Food Phenomena – As much as I love a night at the football, it generally always leads to a real food disaster; not because there’s a lack of choice, far from it, the streets are littered with catering van after catering van – selling mainly what my brother refers to as ‘Rat Burgers’.

I don’t think of myself as a food snob, however I cannot help but be conscious of mass-produced food that sits for hours under heat lamps. This goes back to my chicken-on-a-stick in Dublin. I’m scarred for life, but I’ll spare you the details.

A couple of centuries ago, the wharf area of Sowerby Bridge buzzed with industrialised activity. Can you picture it? The canal, after all, was the main route across the Pennines from Manchester and Manchester was home to the ship canal and numerous goods that were transported for miles across the sea. A certain building in the wharf area famously, ‘as it says on the tin’, housed all of the salt brought in from Cheshire, but the busy buzz of industrialization has given way to something I happen to enjoy writing about. That old salt building now houses The Salt Bar and Grill, a restaurant that serves up good cuisine and pays loving tribute to its historical home.