Yesim Bakery & Café – Narborough Road Leicester

Now, I have heard good things about this place, so when I arranged to meet a friend for lunch this week, I had to give it a go. And I have to say it didn’t disappoint!

From the moment I walked through the doors, Yesim began its assault on my foodie senses. The smell of freshly baked pastries and eastern spices immediately started wafting up my nose. I instantly felt warm and relaxed, a sensation created by the Turkish lamps soft lighting, the rustic wood interior and the lovely little seating area at the back, made cosy from the authentic carpets and piles of colourful cushions. As I wandered further in, my eyes lit up with what was contained in the large display fridge running through the café.  It was filled with all sorts of interesting Turkish delights, including breads, Turkish pizza, börek (savoury pastries fillings with minced meat, cheese, spinach, poultry, fish and other vegetables), meze, sweet pastries, baklava and cookies (kurabiye).

Well, as you can imagine, I was beside myself with excitement. The waiter kindly described every item in the fridge and I selected as many of them as possible for our lunch.  Shortly after, they were brought to our table and laid out in front of us, like a feast, ready for us to share.  It was absolutely delicious. Familiar food and familiar flavours but combined and served in new and interesting ways.

The meal itself represented excellent value for money. I was full to bursting (to the extent that I couldn’t even squeeze in one of the terribly tempting cookies or sweet pastries) and all for just £7 per person (including a drink).

So, if you fancy something a little different for lunch I would most definitely recommend that you head to Yesim. It might only be lunch, but it’s going on the recommendation list!

Pizza Express V's Zizzi's

And now for something a little different...

Zizzi’s or Pizza Express? But which is better? There's only one way to find out...FIGHT!

Round 1: Restaurant

Both restaurants are fresh out of the ‘Catalogue for Chain Restaurants’ and so have that standardised, slightly sterile feel about them, but unlike Zizzi’s, Pizza Express managed to resist hanging plastic strings of garlic and vegetables around their restaurant, so one point to them.

Round 2: Food

Zizzi’s menu appears more exciting than your average pizzeria...lots of Italian named dishes with lists and lists of ingredients underneath. Very exotic. But as I came to discover, things aren’t always what they ‘read’. The description of the ‘Bietole e Ricotta’ salad for example, included a grand total of eight ‘wholesome’ ingredients but when it arrived this pretty much equated to a pile of dressed rocket. I can’t say I noticed the ‘loaded toppings’ on the ‘Rustica’ pizza either.

Pizza Express on the other hand did manage to produce some food as described. Their menu also offered some genuinely original dishes such as the ‘reduced fat’ Leggera pizzas. 500 calorie pizzas made with reduced fat cheeses and served with a salad in the middle of the pizza. Thinking outside the ‘pizza’ box, I like it! The children’s menu was particularly impressive. Three courses including dough balls, side salad, pizza or pasta and a really cute, little sweet consisting of an Ice cream Sundae and a Bambinoccino (an espresso cup of frothed milk served with chocolate sprinkled on top). I think I might order the kids menu next time! Point to Pizza Express.

Round 3: Service:

No contest. At Zizzi we received pretty much zero service. There was a long delay before our order was taken. The Pizza arrived late (and half-burnt), then the ‘salad’ and eventually our drinks.

At Pizza Express we were well looked after by a very pleasant young man. He did have a bobble hat on for much of the service which was slightly strange but it didn’t seem to distract him from his duties. Zizzi’s you’re going down!

Round 4: Value for money:

This is where Pizza Express can deliver its knockout punch. At Zizzi’s we paid £14 for our pizza and £10 for the salad. Yes that’s £24 for what is fundamentally cheese on toast and a giant pile of rocket (with a sprinkling of other ingredients over the top). Neither were very filling and so both represented poor value for money. Drinks were the same. A 175ml glass of wine started from around £4.50 and a bottle of lager was £4. Pizza Express however, was much more reasonably priced. You can expect to pay more like £10 for a main course. The children’s menu, (although could be considered expensive at about £6.50) did represent good value for money.

So it’s all over! Pizza Express easily wins the battle of the high-street Italian chain

restaurants!

The Dog and Gun, Kilby

Next up, Sunday lunch at The Dog and Gun, Kilby.  This one should be short and sweet!

The pub is located in a picturesque, south Leicestershire village. It looked lovely from the outside, with all the charm and appeal you would expect from a country pub.  Inside however, it was rather scruffy, plug in radiators everywhere, tired paintwork and tatty wallpaper.

 The food was very poor. We all chose the 3 course Sunday lunch menu. Garlic mushrooms were unexciting and small in terms of portion size. The roast dinner was pretty much inedible. Think school dinners! The lamb was fatty and tasted of nothing. The roast potatoes were deep fried, soggy on the outside and hard in the middle. The vegetable were scarce, especially the cabbage and the cauliflower was seriously over cooked. The Yorkshire puddings were ‘Aunt Bessie’s’ (other frozen Yorkshire puddings are also available) and definitely not homemade. The custard was ‘instant’ and made straight from a packet.  It was watery, bland and had a very strange texture. 

All of us felt extremely disappointed with the food.  Sadly the service was no better. We had to ask for our order to be taken having waited an age for someone to come over.  The waiter then left the menus on the table and missed one of the childrens’ meals from the order.  The only service we received was the food being brought to our table.  Everything else we had to ask for…gravy, more vegetables, sauces and even cutlery as this had not been replaced after our starter. Unfortunately, the knives and forks were the last things to be brought to the table which meant most of the dinners were cold by the time we were able to starting eating.

Given that there were eight very hungry adults dining that day, who generally take pride in the amount of Sunday dinner they can put away in one sitting, I have never seen so many leftovers on so many plates. Guess that says it all!

Strangely enough, I won’t be recommending The Dog and Gun for Sunday lunch!

Restaurant                             3
Food                                       2
Service                                   2
Value for money                    2

Total                                      9/20

Colourworks – Braunstone Gate, Leicester

Colourworks has proved to be a trickle establishment to review.  I some ways they do a lot of things right but in other ways they do things very wrong…let me explain. 

The restaurant itself is very contemporary, with modern, elegant and stylish interior.  While this creates quite an impact, I personally find it a bit cold and industrial.   The menu had some exciting, original sounding dishes but also some pretty straight forward pasta dishes on it as well. 

The food itself also had its highs and its lows.  My starter was great.  Nice big piece of pork belly served with kale, gravy and an apricot chutney, which despite my initial doubts, did  go well with the dish and brought all elements together.  My friend however ordered the Flambéed King Prawn creamy Thermidor with Parmesan Crisp.  A grand total of four prawns in a cheesy sauce served with a rubbery ‘parmesan crisp’.  Didn’t deliver on flavour or texture and at almost £7 represented very poor value for money.

The main course was nice but just nice.  It didn’t really blow my socks off which I think it probably should seeing as it was nearly £17.  The Baked Seabass was a bit dry due to the Orange and Thyme Bread Stuffing.  The Verouth Cream Sauce was also nice but I found the Red chard bitter and the whole thing needed lifting by a big squeeze of lemon or more of the little tomato garnish it was served with to bring a bit of acidity to the dish to cut through the cream.  If it had cost more like £10 I would have been happy with it but at £16.95 I felt disappointed and didn’t think it good value for money.

The real low light came at desert time.  You may have to sit down for this bit.  I am about to make a shocking revelation!  My friend and I decided to treat ourselves and ordered the ‘Freshly baked Lime Cheese Cake served with a deep intense Blackcurrant Sorbet’ to share.  At £5.45 this is surely going to be the best cheesecake ever?  (I, by the way, love cheesecake.  Any kind, any flavour.  As long as its got has a lovely buttery crunchy biscuit base and a creamy topping you are onto a winner!)  A large slice made its way over to our table.  Racing to pick up my spoon first I positioned the edge it at the ‘sharp end’ of the dessert and pushed down.  My spoon slowly glided through the think creamy topping until eventually it reached the plate.  Yes that’s right.  I said the plate!  I went again. Same!  No biscuit base to be found anywhere.  Noooooooooooo.  Instead, the expected biscuit base had been replaced by…wait for it… a thin layer of sponge!  No crunch, no contrast in flavour, nothing.  Distraught, I showed it to the waitress who just grunted at me not knowing what to say.  She did come back minutes later and explained that because it was a baked cheesecake they use a sponge base as a biscuit one would burn!  Er, I think we both know that’s not true!  Cheated of a true cheesecake experience we left shortly afterwards vowing never to return again in case I seduced once more by the overpriced lime cheesecake, only to find it was a flaming a sponge cake !

I can’t possibly recommend an establishment that serves a cheese cake with a sponge bottom. It’s against my religion but in case your interested the scores are as follows:

Restaurant                                           4/5

Food                                                      3/5
Service                                                  4/5
Value for money                                 2/5

Total                                                      13/20

The Red Lion - Gilmorton, South Leicester

The Red Lion is a modern, bistro pub, serving locally sourced, freshly cooked food. I have been to The Red Lion before and have been impressed, so when a Groupon offer came up I couldn’t resist.  I took my friend as part of her birthday celebrations and wasn’t disappointed.
On entering the pub we received a friendly, warm welcome and a helpful overview of what to expect from our evening.  The standard menu was varied, featuring mainly British pub classics which will suit most budgets.  This was accompanied by a specials board which is great if you like to choose ingredients in season.

We had a Spanish sharing platter to start.  Not sure that it quite worked as a dish but all the individual elements were lovely.  Big, juicy marinated queen olives, slices of chorizo, a pile of crispy whitebait all served with salad and bread.  Excellent value for money.  An enormous portion that even I couldn’t finish!

Both of us selected our mains from the specials board.  My friend’s Bangers and Mash consisted of 3 large, very tasty venison sausages, made all the more interesting by a mustard mash and onion gravy.  I chose the scallops on garlic mash.  Six lovely, sweet scallops, cooked to perfection with just the right amount of garlic mash, flavoured with rosemary.  Both dishes came with a good selection of vegetables (not over cooked) served as a side.

Although on this particular outing the meal was discounted as a result of the Groupon deal, even without it, the meal still offered excellent value for money.  The food was excellent, well cooked, tasty and served as good hearty portions.  The only slightly negative element of the evening was the service.  In their defence when we arrived, they had explained that they had experienced some problems in the kitchen earlier in the day so there was likely to be a delay in the service and food.  However, there were a couple of times we felt a bit neglected as diners. Staff weren’t  available to order more drinks from our table and they offered to take our order before showing us the specials board.  On previous visits service has matched the standard of food so I am willing to forgive them this once!”)

What’s on the board Miss Ford?

Restaurant                              4/5
Food                                         4/5
Service                                     4/5
Value for money                    5/5

Total                                        17/20

One for the recommended list!

La Vida Cafe Bar and Restaurant

Right, well here goes…

First on my hit list is ‘La Vida Café Barand Restaurant’ described by Groupon as a ‘Mediterranean restaurant with colourful and varied menu’ located in the centre of Leicester.  Sounds good, give it a go.

First impression was one of confusion. Wasn’t quite sure what I had walked into and what to expect from the evening. On the one hand La Vida had the makings of a restaurant with damask design wallpaper, white table clothes, formal place settings etc but this was coupled with an informal café style layout, feel and atmosphere. The menu was much the same.  Cheap and cheerful pizza and pasta dishes but this was mixed with a few other random offerings from Spain, Greece and Portugal as well as some expensive ‘A La Carte’ meat and fish dishes.

Seeing as the evening was a special occasion, I opted for more extravagant dishes, ordering the Gamba Piri Piri to start (Tiger prawns in chilli, wine and herb sauce, £5.95) followed by Sirloin Boscaiola (steak in rich red wine sauce with onions and pancetta, £14.90)

The starter didn’t look very exciting but it was nice to eat. About 9 prawns in a rich tomato sauce with lots of flavour and a serious kick of chilli, though there was something definitely missing. It was only really half a dish.  It would have benefited from being served on some chargrilled ciabatta or with some bread.  It defiantly needed something to make it more substantial and to help mop up all the lovely sauce at the end. I think that seems a reasonable expectation for a starter costing £6.

My main looked more impressive. A large sirloin steak with the red wine sauce served over the top.  Sadly this is where the dish peaked. My steak tasted of, well nothing actually. Not a flavour to be detected from any of the elements of the dish, just a big lump of meat swimming about in the sauce. I think the fact the pancetta looked suspiciously like bacon might have had something to do with it?  My fellow diner had chosen the sea bass which was served with tiger prawns, mussels and a wine and lemon sauce.  Except it transpired that there were in fact, no mussels, only the shells and despite the buckets of salt being added at various intervals, like my steak it too was clearing lacking in any flavour.

The accompanying side dishes didn’t fare much better.  The ‘chips’ were more like deep fried roast potatoes, shaped like wedges, cooked until they turned a lovely shade of ‘burnt’!  The vegetables, well, weren’t really vegetables by the time they were served.  The green had quite literally been boiled out of the broccoli which had consequently turned a shade of yellow. The carrots had managed to maintain their colour but sadly no texture and the cauliflower was missing, well the cauliflower! They had served us the leaves and the stalk but no actual vegetable. We did point this out to the staff who replaced the over cooked vegetables with some ever so less over cooked vegetables.  Yay!

For dessert, we both had the lemon cheesecake.  As with the starter, it was half a dish.  Having a very strong lemon flavor a dollop of crème fresh to balance things out and perhaps some fresh fruit to garish would have  helped it along a bit.  Oh and it had a soggy biscuit bottom…need I say more?

So, in summary La Vida sadly won’t be making my list of recommended places to eat in Leicester.  It needs to find itself and figure out what it wants to be.  A café it might be, but a restaurant it certainly is not!

Still I have learnt something from this experience…always read the small print ‘La Vida Café, Bar and Restaurant’.  I should have known it was suffering from an identity crisis!  The clue was in the title!

Scores on the doors:

Restaurant                             2/5

Food                                        2/5
Service                                    3/5
Value for money                   1/5

Total                                        8/20