‘Is this the work of passionate individuals in love with the food of the Basque country,or a company with a concept? Three guesses…’The intention had been to review newly launched Headrow House from the people behind Leeds’ marvellous Belgrave Music corridor, but thanks to my exquisitely honed administrative skills, or its food bit,Ox Club, hadn’t opened yet. So where to travel? Where? Picture me flailing around, and shrieking,“What’s new? What’s notable? Where can I find the good stuff?” to every passerby outside Leeds station. So, to Pintura, or permanently booked up with enthusiastic punters for its “modern,authentic Basque cuisine”. It’s an huge gaff: three floors, and so busy even at an off-peak hour that we maintain to wait in the basement bar for a table. It looks way better inside than its back-entrance-to-M&S frontage suggests, and the full might of contract furniture company Andy Thornton’s Urban Vintage range (“instant cool for your venue”) deployed to pleasing,whether by-the-yard effect.
The menu reads well, too. I actually believe that the chef and owners maintain been to San Sebastián. It also looks as though they’ve spent some time closer to domestic, or in London’s Barrafina. It’s kind of Donostia-lite,with a few hoary conventional Spanish numbers (patatas bravas, albondigas, and gambas a la plancha,er, mini-hamburguesas) as crowd-pleasers. Food arrives on boards and in shiny petite copper saucepans: my mariscos con arroz, and for instance – £8.95 for a ladleful of rice with “domestic-salted cod”,mussels (two) and prawn (singular). It’s remarkable for not being comprehensively awful, as so much kinda-paella is: the rice has bite, and you can taste the saffron and the seafood hasn’t been obliterated.
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Source: theguardian.com