It’s the first post-baby blog post! Now she’s 3 weeks old we felt we could risk venturing out for a meal with her in tow. Granted we’re a bit more limited to lunchtimes for now, but there’s still plenty of options!
So today it was a festive Sunday lunch at the Cross Keys pub in Leeds. It’s a lovely cosy pub (part of the North bar group) in Holbeck urban village. It has an upmarket menu of local seasonal food and a great choice of beers. Today they even had their wood fire blazing and Christmas decorations festooned from the beams. Out the back is a lovely courtyard for al fresco drinks in the summer.
The Sunday lunch menu was simple – 3 choices for each course and it’s £10, £14 or £17 for 1,2 or 3 courses. We had booked ahead and had asked for a suitable table to park the baby at – I was glad we did as it was very busy!
For starters I had smoked salmon with rye bread which was really rustic and simple. Tom had Gressingham duck pate which was ‘light as a mousse’.
We both then opted for roast beef, which comes thickly sliced and cooked (refreshingly!) medium rare. The roast potatoes, Yorkshire puds, creamy leeks & cabbage were all delightful. Even the gravy was tasty – all of the common pitfalls of mass cooking roast dinners were impressively avoided! We really enjoyed it, even though we did have to do a bit of shift eating to settle the baby!
Even though we were quite full it felt rude to turn down pudding – so we shared the chocolate brownie with caramel ice cream. It was yummy too, and disappeared before I could finish Reading the culture section of the paper!
Overall it combines atmosphere with quality and friendly service. And with a bill of £40 for 3 courses it’s definitely an affordable treat.
