Northern glory
North in Leeds is a beer mecca. Nigel Huddleston reports
When British Sunday newspaper the Observer named North in Leeds at the Best Place to Drink in the United Kingdom, there was no one more stunned than its manager Christian Townsley.
Four months on, Townsley still seems unable to believe that nine years of hard work had earned a prestigious top place in the most-voted-for category in the publication’s Food Monthly supplement’s awards.
On the face of it, North is an unremarkable looking venue – a bar down one side of a long rectangular space and a few plain looking tables and chairs down the other.
The clues to what makes it special are in the dozen or so continental beer taps on the bar top, and the tantalising beer menu that’s printed on the opposite wall.
North has more than 70 beers on offer at any one time, and about a dozen of them on draught. There’s no fancy food – a chalkboard offers a choice of meat or cheese with bread or pie and peas – and the only nods to what might be called cutting edge interior design are a few off-the-wall paintings, er, on the wall.
The Observer citation called it “a curious corridor that reeks of shabby chic”, and compliments don’t come much more back-handed than that.
Yet for all its comfortable, surface ordinariness, North topped a poll that included trendy Islington gastropubs, the darlings of the capital cocktail circuit and the swankiest hotel bars with views of the sea.
Crucially, the Observer poll was voted for by the paper’s readers, ordinary people, rather than the checklist-la.....
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By Nigel Huddleston
Section : Spotlight
Page number : 64
