The Black Cat Club is the new venue on Park Row in Leeds City Centre on the old site of El Gato Negro tapas restaurant, under the same ownership but representing a new direction (el gato negro is Spanish for the black cat).
Their website asks you to “prepare to be swept into a new era of entertainment”, and whilst, on our visit, the dawning of this new era is hard to identify, we certainly do have a good time in this pristinely appointed new bar.
On arrival we are greeted by incredibly friendly staff. Throughout our evening the staff are lovely and very helpful, particularly through our struggles to understand and play shuffleboard later on. Firstly, we are guided into the main bar area, which is a panopticon of screens arranged about the room such that I think it would be impossible to find a spot in which you are not in sight of one. The Black Cat Club bills itself as a great place to watch live sports and whilst there isn’t any live sport on when we visit, on this evidence, it’s hard to argue. I’m sure many of us are familiar with the frustration of going out to watch the big game and struggling to find a good spot in a pub or bar where you can actually see what’s going on. There’s little danger of that in the Black Cat Club.
The space looks to have been expensively renovated, with plush banquettes around the edge of the room, overhead stage-lighting, and cinema signage above the bar advertising the entertainment and deals on offer. Each table has a button in the centre that can be pressed for service, which seems to activate an alert on the smart-watches of the servers patrolling the floor. After accidentally pressing the button when reaching for the menu (I am a bit clumsy), I can imagine it becoming a bit tiresome for the waitstaff later on in the evening once patrons are well-oiled and less sure-handed, and when the accidental presses of the button might start to outnumber the deliberate.
Alongside the live sport, the cinema signage above the bar advertises live music and DJs on Fridays and Saturdays, and the bar area is also peppered with references to another of the main attractions at the Black Cat Club: gaming. Not computer games, but instead the decidedly more analogue alternatives of darts and shuffleboard. After we have had a drink we are shown upstairs to what is, ostensibly, the gaming floor, with a gallery of oches for the darts and two long shuffleboard tables. Much like the rest of the bar, it is very pristinely and stylishly appointed, and despite our aforementioned struggles with shuffleboard, the very friendly staff patiently explain how we can get the most fun out of a game we, at first, can’t play. After a short while we find ourselves capable of, and enjoying, playing shuffleboard.
There’s a full menu of food on offer, but we try only the bar snacks. These are principally of the deep-fried and salty variety which, to be honest, is exactly what you want in this kind of setting. Salt and pepper squid, ribs, mozzarella sticks, and a variety of dips and sauces are put away easily in between games with only minimal grease making its way onto the shuffleboard pucks.
There are a few places that do this kind of thing, but the Black Cat offers a lot all in one place. Other places often only offer one activity, and once you’ve finished there’s little incentive to hang around, but the positive here is that the Black Cat Club offers a variety of different activities in a setting you can see yourself sticking around in. Whether it’s for the food, live music or DJs, or the live sport, I can see it being a nice spot to while away a few hours with a big group of friends.
As we descend from the gaming room back down into the main bar, that does seem to be what a good number of people seem to have decided to do, as trays of impressive-looking cocktails go past, some bubbling an alarming green like a cartoon science experiment. Perhaps something to try on my next visit.
Photography by Jac Williamson.
