The Alchemist | Trinity Leeds

I visited the Alchemist in Trinity Leeds on Monday for the fifth time and thought, you know what I'm going to blog about this place. I just love it. There's something about it that means I will happily return time and time again, and there's nothing better than sharing the love. 

I'd been to the Manchester restaurant for cocktails a while back before the Trinity centre was built in Leeds but never saw it as somewhere I would choose to go and eat. I'm not sure why but in my head I kind of thought it wasn't possible for a place to serve amazing cocktails and equally great food. Generally speaking most restaurants that advertise themselves as a bar as well as a restaurant excel in only one area, so where the cocktails exceed expectations the food is underwhelming and vice versa. That's not the case however for the Alchemist.

When I got an email telling me the Alchemist was taking part in the January "50% off food" sale I obviously had to take advantage and book a table, because who can resist cheap and tasty food? Not me, that's for sure.

After we arrived and sat down the waiter came and introduced himself which always scores extra brownie points for me - good customer service is a memorable as the food itself in my opinion. I went for a passion fruit mojito which is one of my ultimate fave cocktails and it was delicious (I didn't remember to take a picture of any drinks - sorry!).

I can never pick between starters because they all sound so delicious. In the end we ordered four to share - as you do for just two people - it's hard not to be greedy when you're getting 50% off the food bill. The green olives were amazing, I've only started to eat olives this year and I find they're hit and miss when you go out for dinner. I'm not sure what the brighter green variety is but they are definitely my favourite!

We also ordered the beer battered prawn lollipops with sweet chilli sauce, crispy baby calamari with lemon mayonnaise, tiger bread and edamame beans with soy and sea salt. The prawns were absolutely delicious, I've got to admit I'm not usually a creature of habit but seem to have ordered them every single time I've visited the Alchemist, I really love the presentation too. I also love calamari but can be a bit fussy if it's really chewy, I find that the texture of baby calamari is perfect and the chilli and spring onions make it super tasty.

For my main course I went for the rib eye steak with a side of onion rings. It was between that and the chicken fajitas but when you're getting a good deal you may as well go for the most expensive choice. The steak was cooked to perfection, I asked for mine medium rare without peppercorn sauce - boring I know but sometimes I think sauce ruins the flavour of a steak. It did however come with lots of garlic butter which I am a big fan of. I'll take the opportunity now to say sorry about the picture quality, it was pretty dark and I didn't have my camera on me so I know they don't do enough justice but trust me, the food was great!

We finished off the evening by sharing the sticky toffee pudding which was divine and definitely big enough for two people to share if you're feeling like a full dessert may tip you over the edge! As it was a quiet Monday evening we also stayed for another cocktail after dinner (after already polishing off a bottle of wine with dinner - the drinks bill came to way more than our food, oops).

Whilst the waiter came to take our final drinks order I asked if he had any suggestions of things me and my friend, who was visiting from Newcastle, could do the following day. He was one of two young waiters who were super attentive all evening and they both came over to chat and advise us on what we could spend the day doing which was really lovely. I wish I could remember their names, all I know is that one was a dancer and one had a really impressive moustache but I'd like to let them know their customer service was excellent and really ended the night on a high.

If I had to choose one word to describe myself it would most definitely be "foodie" (or clumsy, but for the sake of this post we'll go with foodie) so let me know if you enjoyed reading and if you'd like more to see more food posts because I'd love to do more of them. Also leave a comment below if you've been to the Alchemist, what did you think of it?