G alleria is an all-day restaurant tacked on to the side of Project House , a new (or at least new-ish) arts venue not far from Leeds city centre. People who don’t know Leeds or what it’s like – let’s, for the sake of argument, call them southerners – often imagine it to be a rough-and-ready place full of brash Yorkshire pragmatists who have absolutely no time for pretentiousness. Well, they’re wrong.
Leeds has always been chock-full of some of Britain’s greatest dandies, dreamers and creative crackpots. I blame the university, the Industrial Revolution and something in the drinking water from the Royd Moor Reservoir. Project House, a collaboration between several local artistic groups – Brudenell Social Club , Belgrave Music Hall , the Welcome skate store and Super Friendz – is a 1,000-person-capacity venue with a restaurant attached, and a great example of Leeds in full weird-and-wonderful mode.
Go for the “equilibrium retreat”, the rave bingo, the all-day desi festival and the “bring your own brood” mass yoga sessions, and stay for a whole wood-fired chicken with confit garlic, home fries, butterhead lettuce and dip, all cooked by chef Andy Castle, previously of Ox Club , a grill restaurant 10 minutes up the road. Galleria’s menu, it has to be said, is much, much more enticing than your average arts centre cafe-bar’s – there’s not a limp slice of quiche or a thawed-out coffee and walnut cake in sight. Stale, mass-produced scones and dry ci.