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I spent a couple days in Leeds for Blog North 4, it was only a quick trip but I made sure to fit in a few delicious bites and plenty of Northern goodness from the city. Usually when I visit Leeds, it’s for shopping and catching up with friends, we stay in the City Centre but this time I wanted to explore Leed’s honest food scene with a twist.

I went along to We, The Animals’ first seasonal pop-up restaurant, The Beast and The Swine. Where I stayed satiated with East Coast crab (seafood from Bridlington), ale cured ham served with own-made focaccia, Yorkshire Wolds chicken and had my first taste of veal tongue!

We, The Animals are a Leeds-based collective of four food enthusiasts; two of their team are professional chefs and the other two members are seasoned front-of-house waiters/bartenders. Their 8 course menu compromised of strictly local and seasonal produce, aiming to arouse diners’ senses and unveil the underbelly of Yorkshire cuisine. The Beast and The Swine was held in Trinity Church, I’d never eaten a meal in a church before, a first for everything but this helped to set a nice air of curiosity into the evening.

I was seated on a very long table laid with mismatched crockery, a keepsake menu and tealights. There was a tasteful arrangement of strings of teared book pages woven around the pillars printed with graphical ink illustrations, animals in particular.

Food Glorious Food
Although the event was meant to be a casual and relaxed affair, it was certainly a night (for my belly) to remember. On arrival I was given a gin cocktail, in a baby’s bottle. It was a lovely refreshing cocktail and drinking out of a baby bottle felt odd but added to the enigmatic atmosphere of the night. Starters were a smorgasbord made up of rabbit rillettes, cider-glazed ham, smoked mustard sausage served with vegetables, a tasty broad bean hummus (delicious!) and freshly baked focaccia. This was a very hands on course, where we shared the board with other diners, I used my fingers and made my own eating combinations with the multiple cold foods on a table.

The evening menu included courses with fish – which was creamy Bridlington crab and a pink grapefruit salad; a selection of meats – the bolito misto was a hearty plate of Yorkshire chicken, homemade spicy cotechino sausage and a slice of veal tongue served with a wedge of steamed savoy cabbage and dark lentils; platter of cheese and dessert was a croque-en bouche finishing with coffee served by Laynes Espresso and petit fours which were handmade chocolate neatly wrapped and tied with a lovely hand illustrated gift tag.

The Beast and The Swine was a truly unforgettable meal with lovely hand finished details (candles, illustrated gift tags and artistic wine arrangements), alongside a creative menu that highlighted the most of the local and seasonal of spring produce – plus, I had my first taste of veal tongue, and that’s definitely not going to be an experience I’ll easily forget!

To find out more from The Beast and The Swine and their other upcoming culinary events, pop over to their facebook page or follow updates on Twitter.

A good nights' sleep at The New Ellington, Leeds

Starting the morning smiling with a nice cooked hot breakfast

Filling up on Northern Goodness
Thank you Leeds for filling me up on an abundance of sensual pleasures. With the Leeds Food Festival on the horizon, I’m looking forward to discovering more of the Leeds’ independent restaurants, bars and cafes food scene.

A big thank you to the New Ellington Hotel for making my stay so welcome too. With its stylish interior and lovely big comfortable bed that took all my might to prise myself from. It was an ideal place to settle down for the night and freshen up before my trip back down to London.

Note: All my posts are about things I love and want to share with my readers. The integrity of what is written is extremely important to me – all my thoughts, writing and opinions are solely mine (unless stated otherwise) – Missie/ Cindz

{photos by Cindy Cheung and We the Animals as shared on Instagram}

Digging into the Bungalow and Bears Ruby Jean's Burger. Nice.

Every so often, I’ll crave for something not so healthy or clean – you know those moments when you feel that you’ve been ‘too good’ food-wise for the week. Say hello to the burger – something that makes you think beef-meat overload and America sandwiched in a sesame bread bun overloaded with relish and lettuce. Nice!

Well, I experienced one of those days and to satisfy my urge for the burger I trotted off to Bungalows and Bears (twitter: @bungsandbears). I hadn’t been in here for food for a long time and it looked like they’d updated the food menu since the last time I’d been in. I ordered their Ruby Jean’s burger and fries – a burger stuffed with smoked bacon, emmental, mushrooms and onion rings. The beefburger was char-grilled and one bite into this burger, I was honestly amazed (in terms of size and taste – just look at those photos above!). It wasn’t anything fancy-looking, it was just that they managed to do it right. The filling combo was surprisingly amazing. Beware though, if you’re expecting clean fingers after tackling this burger, then you’ll be disappointed but then who wants to eat burgers clean? :) It’s a fairly large burger so do make sure you’re hungry too, I struggled to finish it but I had friends who were happy to help (we don’t like to waste good food). The burger was divine indeed. I’m not usually a big fan of the fries, but their double-cooked chips were delicious! – not the greasy and soggy type of chips.

The price isn’t your average cheap burger (but I always say, you pay for what you get) – the Ruby Jean’s burger with all her trimmings is £9.75 but every Tuesday evening Bungalows and Bears offer 2-4-1 on all their gourmet burgers. If you’re vegetarian, there’s also plenty of choices for homemade veggie options with three types to choose from including the Shroomaloomi (flat mushrooms and grilled halloumi) – I’ve not tried it myself but my foodie companion Clare (@pinklittlebean) recommends it and she’s got great cheese taste! The staff were generally friendly and the service generally good.

It may be a heart attack on a plate, but it sure does look good…and I can confirm that it tasted as good as it looked!

Bungalows and Bears/ Old Fire Station, 50 Division St, City Centre, Sheffield S1 4GF/ Tel: 0114 279 2901

Keep up-date with my food and design adventures by giving me a ‘like‘ and we’ll keep in touch – Missie Cindz :)

{Photo by Cindy Cheung. If you have an immense burger combo you’d love to share, send me your burger photos and suggestions to try to: feedme(at)missiecindz(dot)com}

East & West, South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant

I apologize in advance if I’m about to make you REAL hungry…

I had never tasted Sri Lankan food before so having dinner at East and West was something very new. I was really keen to give this place a go after reading all the enthusiastic foodie tweets and drooling over the photographs shared on twitter about this place (thanks @feastandglory for the recommendation).

East and West is situated on Abbeydale Road, a small independent cafe-styled restaurant seating up to 20-25 people and calls themselves as serving the finest authentic South Indian and Sri Lankan cuisine. Our waiter, Siva was very friendly and welcoming, greeting us straight away and made us feel very welcome. He pointed out the visual menu hung on the wall infront of us – if I’m honest, I’ve only ever had a curry probably no more than three times in my whole life! (yes, no joke) so this was certainly a departure from my normal food fare. After studying a varied and interesting menu; almost all the dishes were new to me so I asked Siva for his recommendations and daily specials. Siva was always happy to explain what the dishes were exactly and I appreciated his patience.

I got a good feel from the staff and this made me want to return (this was before any of the food had even arrived yet!), so as a heads up to all the people with businesses reading this; helpful and attentive customer service is key! Genuine smile and friendly services made all the difference.

Our food appeared very quickly, a good thing, we were hungry! Complimentary poppadoms soon arrived after we chose our main. For starters included Mutton Rolls (rolled pan cake filled with mixture of mutton, onion and spices) and Masala dosa (a very light pancake/crepe made of urid dal (white lentils) and rice served with tasty sambar & chutney) – see 3rd photo.

Our mains were all from the Day’s Specials menu; Meat and Vegetable Thali which I chose an additional fish curry to go with this too (although without it would had been enough food already). “Thali” meaning a plate in most Indian languages (and here were lots of plates!). My thali served in a metal platter with small, fitted bowls known as katori) featured a combo of dry and wet vegetable dishes, tandoori roti, poppadom, rice, pickle, curd, a sweet, meat and fish (tuna steak) – in short, this was a tasty platter of mini cute dishes of everything! – see 4th photo.

The Sri Lanken Special Lump Rice with Mutton was definitely tasty surprise. This was a huge mound of rice topped with eggplant curry, mutton meat, onion sambola, and a whole egg, which was hardboiled and then fried, plus other authentic native ingredients all wrapped and steamed in a banana leaf. This was a meal with a variety of wonderful flavours. The meat was tender and tasty and I enjoyed the tartness of the curry – although I must warn you, this was a massive meal for one and also very spicy too! (I lost count on the number of glasses of waters I asked for here). A lovely hint of pungency and earthy flavour came from the rice. Overall, if you don’t order anything else, this is a must try dish.

I couldn’t go without the pudding
Finally, next up was dessert. Although we were bursting at the seams, I was still curious to try and find out more about Sri Lankan desserts/puddings. The Watalappam (see photo above) is a traditional Sri Lankan dessert made with jaggery and coconut milk, brown palm sugar, cashew nuts, rice flour, treacle (Sri Lankan syrup), eggs and various spices including cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and nutmeg. The carrot halwa, a very thick carrot and milk type pudding with strong flavours and chunks of ginger wasn’t my cup of tea. These puddings are definitely not your average apple crumble and custard fayre; after a mouthful of each I had to pass (well, I was stuffed too!)…I found them both interesting and I’m glad I still tried them though.

When did I actually finish eating all this I hear you ask!?
The food is certainly tasty and very filling, the mutton lump rice dish was the best of the main dishes. But if you’re a lightweight like me when it comes to spicy food (I wasn’t warned), then it would be best to ask for your food ‘mild or less spicy’ – Sri Lankan cuisine (in my opinion) is very spicy/hot with the use of chilli, cardamom, cumin, coriander and other spices. East and West is certainly worth a visit if you fancy something different from the usual curries served in Sheffield and was great value coming in around £17.00 per head (no alcohol).

Thank you Siva, I was able to get a good introduction into Sri Lankan street and restaurant food.

East & West | 227 Abbeydale Rd | Sheffield | S7 1FJ
Opening Times Mon-Fri: 17:00 – 23:00, Sat-Sun: 12:00 – 23:00

{ photos by Cindy Cheung as posted on Instagram }

THANK YOU to Grazia Magazine for featuring us in the '10 hot things to do in Sheffield' article.

A massive THANK YOU to Grazia magazine for featuring Sheffield in the ’10 hot things to do in Sheffield‘ article.

The women’s fashion and lifestyle magazine this week presented to us a special ‘Local regional’ issue for the North, which features into a whopping eight pages of the best places to eat and drink, shop, hang out, party, and everything in between in Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle. Grazia asked readers a few months ago to recommend their favourite aspects of their hometown or City, and I was really happy to see they had included Sheffield in their round-up.

Claire from The Jazzpad (twitter: @jazz_pad) is Grazia Local’s Sheffield ambassador and you can view her page on Grazia to find out her view on our city here. We can still continue to tell Grazia why Sheffield rules by sending them a tweet of our favourite pictures of the city using the hash tag: #GraziaSheffield to feature on tomorrow’s Grazia Daily.

Well, I was born and bred in Sheffield – it’s changed significantly in the past few years (we all still remember the big ‘ole in road’ and Tinsley Towers right?) but all these changes for the better and more colourful. There’s still a lot Sheffield needs to do to compete over the other ‘big boy’ cities but we are definitely beginning to get seen and heard and this week’s feature in Grazia proves this.

The regeneration throughout the city has made it more vibrant and attractive than ever. I’m very proud to be able to say that I come from Sheffield – my strong northern Yorkshire accent seals a stamp on that. So, here is a whirlwind of photographs to some of my favourite places to home… (previously instagram’d, blogged and tweeted)…

Missie Cindz Sheffield Food Adventures in photos

Great life and work discovery: the Sheffield Food scene
It’s crazy to look back at old pictures and realise how much food discovering I’ve covered since this blog began; sharing my breakfast, lunch and dinner food photos along the way has played an important part in discovering what I enjoy doing. I’m a real-life example of how blogging has been a passport to lots of amazing new things. Sharing my Sheffield food experiences with everyone, whether I knew them or not.

From my first visit to a Sheffield’s Farmer’s Market up in Nether Edge, where I discovered a connection with food and my local community. I was touched and wrapped up in the variety of artisan food on display, and soon realised Sheffield had so many talented producers, chefs, hard working farmers and restauranteurs! I thought others should know about these people too and to cut a long story short, that’s how this colourful blog came about.

Fast forward 18 months and I have taken over 3000 photos of my food discovering adventure – sharing these on our Missie Cindz’s Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, twitter and this blog.

Welcome the Sheffield Egg with a happy fork – try it today!

The Rude Shipyard cafe and bookshop, Abbeydale Road

Decent food items at a picnic helps to make the event a memorable one

PJ taste scoffing a tub of Our Cow Molly ice cream

Eating to a Size Sheffield!…

• The Sheffield Egg – by PJ taste. It’s a proper good egg made by using a combination of local skills, businesses and ingredients to make it a true Sheffield egg.
• The Rude Shipyard Cafe and book shop, Abbeydale Road
• Endcliffe Park Cafe in Endcliffe Park, near Hunters Bar roundabout
• The vibrant Sheffield Farmers Markets:
  – Bradfield Farmer’s Markets
  – Norton Farmer’s Market
  – The Sheffield Night Markets
• Our Cow Molly ice cream and milk
• Cocoa – Ecclesall Road
  Home to the BEST chocolates and truffles in all of Brit-kingdom. This vibrant sweet shop is a converted student house filled top to bottom with kitsch interior design and baking gifts and books…Move over Wonka, there’s a new chocolate factory in town!
• The Broadfield’s homemade pies
• Craving a Burger & Fries? – The Harley

Sheffield's Peace Gardens

Great for a sit-down and think: Sheffield’s Peace Gardens
The peace gardens are the perfect hang out place for students, families and business people – you’ll find it difficult to find a green spot to sit on as soon as the sun pops out! The massive central fountains and large grass patches make the perfect place for shoppers to relax after walking all day, with lots of restaurants and cafes nearby for refreshments and the Gardens are also right next to the winter gardens, Fargate and the Moor.

Missie Cindz Pud Inn at the Rutland Arms

Great for an afternoon treat: Missie Cindz Pud Inn Clubs
Come have desserts with me and a room filled with pudding entusiasts at our favourite Pud Inn – the Rutland Arms, Brown Street. Pud Inn is a quarterly event which I organise serving a wholesome sweet five courses of locally made puddings with a different theme each time. Heaven! – we know.

Our next Pud Inn fest will be on 22nd September with a Party-puddings theme – so make sure you’re not left without a spoon and hope you can join us.

The Green City. Sheffield is one of the greenest cities in Britain

Cheers Grazia! (I'll drink to that)

Cheers Grazia and @jazz_pad for this week’s double page Sheff’licious feature – and I’ll drink to that.

Yorkshire has had many reasons to celebrate over the past few weeks. The Sheffield edition came out on Tuesday, and you can pick up your copy for just £1 this week. Finally, thank you Sheffield and its lovely people for teaching me lots of new things and inspiring me to cook up meaningful design projects. Exciting! — Missie Cindz :)

{photos by Cindy Cheung}

Endcliffe Park Cafe, Sheffield

It’s a Park Life…
Endcliffe Park Cafe (@endparkcafe) is a family-friendly cafe located in the lovely Endcliffe Park, by a river and an open play area. The place looked so welcoming and cosy from the outside – I couldn’t resist not popping in for a cuppa. I would actually live in there! The main entrances to the Park are off Hunters Bar and Rustlings Road with some public car parking available within the park and in the surrounding area. I found the cafe good value and in a really nice spot.

This quaint, pavilion styled cafe offers something for all the family. It is simple but quite an institution, serving a variety of light bites and main meals to either take away or eat in, all freshly prepared on site daily. The menu has a range of snacks, hot and cold sandwiches, toasties, milkshakes, homemade cakes, ice creams, hot and cold drinks. With tables inside and lots of seats out on the grass – making it a great meeting place if you’ve got young children, pushchairs, dogs, or just muddy shoes! There were some cafe benches outside the cafe too which was quite nice to sit and watch children playing frisbee with their parents, students sunbathing in the sunshine or fellow walkers taking a cosy stroll along the park’s footpath. Nice.

This quaint, pavilion styled cafe offers something for all the family

The cafe also offers a small ‘book swap’ section.

Hot and cold drinks, homemade cakes and freshly prepared on-site meals

Fish finger sandwiches always makes kidults like me HAPPY! :)

The cafe also offers a small ‘book swap’ section, which I found was a nice, personal touch to the place. Diners can leave one of their most-loved books, donating the book to the cafe for other readers, and then pick up another book in exchange. So if there’s been a book that has inspired you and you feel every other person should read it – then now is your chance to spread the word.

I could literally hang out here all day feeling good…read one of their books or catch up with friends over drinks sat in the sunshine. It was nice to be away from the hustle and bustle of the city-centre life and taste a slice of real Park Life – Missie/Cindy :)

Opening hours

• Daily throughout summer from 9.00 am – 5.00 pm
• Winter weekdays 9.00 am – 4.00 pm. Weekends 9.00 am – 5.00 pm

The Endcliffe Park Cafe
The Old Pavilion Endcliffe Park
Rustlings Rd
Sheffield
S11 7AB

{photos by Cindy Cheung}

Trying out a new Sheffield hangout for dinner. Nice table cloths guys...

Craving a Burger & Fries?
The other day I had the urge for a wholesome meaty burger. A rare impulse as I’d call myself a frequent salad lover (yes, really), so I went turned to twitter on where we could go. If I’m craving a burger, usually I’ll go to a regular restaurant or make one myself. I don’t usually crave fast food and tend to get it only if I’m on limited time or on road-trips when we need to make a quick stop.

My course: Creamy Creamy Muck Muck burger

Krispy’s Dream, a burger that is breakfast meets lunch meets dessert!

Alongside the jaw-dropping burgers range there is also a straight forward “B-I-Y, Build It Yourself” range, where you can choose a meat for your basic 5oz burger, and then add toppings and sides to build your perfect burger. Prices start at £3.25 for a basic beef or bean burger. My burger, named the Creamy Creamy Muck Muck, was comically monstrous – a seeded white bun stuffed with a mountain of homemade chicken strips, mozzarella sticks and breaded mushrooms bound together with blue cheese sauce and salsa (a veggie option is available), served with a cup load of skinny fries and side salad (I opted for the salad but there was a choice of four different sides to choose from).

I practically had to unhinge my jaw to take a bite, and as I gnawed at the pile of chicken, mushrooms and cheese, smearing my face with grease, the tangy salsa blending with crispy chicken and oozed out the back of the soft bun. It was a sloppy, delicious mess! – I eventually had to resort to the knife and fork to eat it.

yes, I really did have to take one deeeeeeeeeeep breath before eating....

My foodie-friend date of the evening (@jtang92) opted for the Krispy’s Dream burger – something which crosses with breakfast infused with lunch and dessert all on one plate! This was a pork burger with crispy bacon and deep-fried banana fritters with maple syrup served in glazed donut. No joke, instead of the normal bread bun you’d expect it was served on a doughnut ring! I found it all incredibly amusing and very charming.

Not only did all the crazy combinations of ingredients work, but it showed that you can improve and develop on a burger ‘classic’. I felt like I’d finally gotten what I’d hoped to find satisfy a burger crave: a burger truly worth craving.

The Harley is cheap, cheerful and served a purpose. It isn’t a chain and was solid and unique. I would recommend this place for young people on a budget who want to be within walking distance of some very good pubs and the city centre. They also makes an effort to host live music frequently as well as having DJ’s keeping people entertained at weekends.

If you do go in readers, please make sure you’re not on a summer diet! :)

View the full Harley’s Sheffield Food Menu

The Harley Sheffield
334 Glossop Road
Sheffield
S10 2HW

Note: All my posts are about things I love and want to share with my readers. The integrity of what is written is extremely important to me – all my thoughts, writing and opinions are solely mine (unless stated otherwise) – Missie/ Cindz

{ Photos by Cindy Cheung }