The Swine Bistro, previously the Swine that Dines, is something of a Leeds institution.
From its beginnings as a small cafe on North Street, Jo and Stu Myers have developed a restaurant synonymous with great food and great company, a place that is always a reliable recommendation to friends and family visiting Leeds, and somewhere when merely mentioned always seems to elicit nods of approval from others who have visited.
On previous visits, I have felt very well taken care of: the food has been great, and so has the service. Jo has been heading up the front of house on both visits, and if the exceptional food being set down in front of us hadn’t been enough to provoke a smile, Jo’s infectiously buoyant personality couldn’t have failed to inject a healthy dose of happiness into our evenings. The launch night saw us being treated to a range of delicious tasters. No change there, then.
The only slight weakness in their set-up has been the restaurant itself. A lovely, if compact, space, the team had done their level best to ensure that the surroundings reflected the refinement of the food and the service, and for the most part they had done a good job, but there remained a vestigial sense of its past – a sandwich shop that proved hard to erase entirely. For example: the small kitchen was ostensibly in the same room as the dining space, taking up roughly a third of the restaurant and partitioned only by a low wall. Whilst I have always enjoyed being able to watch the hustle of a busy kitchen staff, I am sure there are significant logistical drawbacks to your kitchen staff sharing the same room as your diners.
Recognising the need for a bigger and better space, the team at the Swine set up a crowdfunder to help fund a move to a new venue, a crowdfunder which provided further evidence of the restaurant’s popularity: an initial target of £25,000 was easily surpassed, ultimately landing them with £42,000 to finance the move raised from around 400 people.
That new venue, a former hairdresser’s on Otley Road, has now duly been found and outfitted with a full-sized kitchen, as well as a dining room that doubles the number of covers the Swine are able to serve. We visit as the team are making final preparations for their opening, and they are clearly, and rightly, proud of what is a very different space from their previous location. There is a generously sized and stylishly appointed dining space with exposed brick and chic greens on the walls, floor to ceiling windows that look out over Otley Road offering excellent people-watching opportunities (a venue on the infamous Otley Run is on the other side of the road, far enough away for diners to be removed from the fray, but close enough to get a good look at the goings on), and importantly: there is a much bigger adjoining kitchen and prep space.
It is in this new kitchen that Executive Chef Stu Myers and new Head Chef Kirsty Cheetham look forward to continuing the culinary success that has seen the restaurant develop such a loyal following over the years. The new menu will include the pies, terrines and homemade sausages for which the Swine has become well-known, but will be expanded to take advantage of locally sourced ingredients and local suppliers, including the likes of George and Joseph Cheesemongers, Tarbetts Fishmongers, and Latitude Wines. Highlights from the new menu apparently include the likes of an ox cheek and oxtail pie, a pork & pistachio sausage with lentils and mushrooms, and a twice baked comte cheese souffle with hazelnut, sage and fennel. This all sounds, frankly, sensational, but of particular additional interest are plans for a new Sunday Dinner offering, created with input from new Head Chef Kirsty Cheetham, who has twice previously been awarded “Best Sunday Roast” by the Observer Food Monthly magazine.
Plans for the future of the Swine don’t stop at the new venue. The site of the old restaurant is due to be repurposed into a full-time bakery to produce baked goods and desserts for the restaurant, with plans for it to eventually become a permanent site for their sandwich business, “Here Comes the Bun”.
It’s lovely to see people who have so reliably done excellent things over the years given the opportunity to do even more of those excellent things to an even higher standard, and that’s what it feels like this new venue offers for the team at the Swine Bistro.
I know that I am excitedly booking myself in to try their new menu at the earliest opportunity, and I, along with many others I’m sure, would recommend that you do so, too.
Photography by Tallulah Treadaway.
