Leeds eats like a city built on wool money and mill-worker appetites: beef-dripping fish fryers, Keralan and Punjabi kitchens, 300-year-old pubs and a craft beer scene that started on New Briggate in 1997. Three days from suburb bakeries to street-food halls.
Leeds' most food-dense suburb: Bakery 164 pulls sourdough and pastel de nata from 8am, George & Joseph at 140 Harrogate Road stocks 60-plus British cheeses, and a dozen delis line one Victorian high street.
Indian street food married to craft beer in a basement on Mill Hill since 2014: okra fries, vada pav and egg bhurji at £5-7 a plate, ordered at the counter and eaten at shared tables under the arches.
Leeds' largest specialty roastery pours at its waterside cafe on The Boulevard at Leeds Dock, roasting on a Loring machine in the same building. Filter flights, batch brew and cardamom buns, open 8am-4pm.
Leeds' oldest pub, licensed in 1715 and hidden down Turk's Head Yard off Briggate: a copper-topped bar, tiled Luncheon Bar frontage, Yorkshire cask ale and a narrow courtyard that fills the moment sun hits.
Wood-fired cooking over a custom-built grill in a converted Headrow textile factory. Weekend brunch runs 10am-2pm — burnt-butter pancakes, grill-smoked bacon chop, flatbreads — with the roof terrace upstairs.
Frying since 1934 on Weetwood Lane: haddock in beef dripping, chip-shop curry sauce, bread and butter brought without asking. A proper sit-down restaurant with a separate takeaway counter beside it.
The Old Flax Store in Holbeck, a Grade II mill converted into Northern Monk's taproom in 2015. Twenty-odd taps of Faith pale and Patrons Project one-offs, a resident pizza kitchen and mill-window seating.
Keralan cooking on Mill Hill run by a family from Kochi: karimeen pollichathu wrapped in banana leaf, meen moilee coconut fish curry and lace-edged appams — the counterweight to Leeds' Punjabi curry houses.
A Yorkshire-only kitchen at 20 Kirkgate: Yorkshire pudding wraps, black pudding hash and Yorkshire tapas boards, poured alongside beer from Leeds, Ilkley and Saltaire breweries. Brunch from 9am, plates £8-12.
A street-food hall on the top floor of Trinity Leeds where five Airstreams and vans are craned indoors and rotate every few weeks, parked alongside six permanent kitchens. The line-up is never the same twice.
Opened in 1997, the narrow bar that started Leeds' craft beer scene and later grew into North Brewing Co. Sixteen taps, a deep Belgian and German bottle list, cheese toasties and no music loud enough to shout over.
Three floors on Cross Belgrave Street: Dough Boys pizza and Patty Smith's burgers at street level, a gig room above and a roof terrace over the Northern Quarter rooftops. Kitchens run late, slices from £5.