The Highland Laddie in Leeds is a place of thrilling finesse

Photography by Gary Calton

And then, all of a sudden, there it was: a sunlit, jutting wedge of handsome Victorian redbrick ornamented by overflowing hanging baskets, perched on a little traffic promontory like a long-beached tea clipper and marooned beside a BuzzBall graveyard of overgrown scrubland. The impression, if I had to name it, was of the one grizzled old lady who refuses to sell up to property developers. “It’s like the only building on the street that wasn’t bombed in the war,” offered Clev, an old friend who lives nearby(ish), in Sheffield, once he’d joined me inside, had an admiring look around, and begun to peck at a pint.

The point of mentioning all this is that, by the end of a spectacularly enjoyable, circa-three-hour meal, the pleasingly aberrant exterior of the Laddie felt less like an accident and more like a useful thematic primer. This is a place where you can get £5.50 pints of house pilsner, but also freshly shucked oysters presented on a glinting orb of crushed ice. It’s a place where vintage Newcastle Brown Ale bar towels sit beside little doilied side plates of oven-warm, lobster madeleines and glasses of orange wine. Yes, in one sense, the Laddie (which was more recently known as The Highland, before it closed in 2023) is a sensitively refurbished local watering hole with an unusually ambitious menu. On the other, it is somewhere that feels, at its best, like a thrilling rip in the space-time continuum; a playful, richly textured and highly considered exploration of northern pub culture that brims with creativity, confidence and a kind of eccentric meticulousness that is its own heady intoxicant.

Can you sense, in my tone, the almost tearful relief of a man who was just grateful that a very long journey had not been wasted? Having schlepped from my home in southeast London, it did occur to me that making an almost five-hour round trip for a pub lunch was evidence of a particular sort of madness. It is hard to explain why I felt such a burning conviction to go to Leeds. Maybe it was all the exciting, positive things I had heard about Sam Pullan and Nicole Deighton, the Laddie’s founding duo, who had already done such an alluring restoration job on Empire Cafe, their acclaimed previous opening in the city centre. Maybe I was curious about this Yorkshire city’s apparent dining resurgence. Maybe, having spent much of the past year raking over London memories for a memoir, I just craved a change of scene and psychic geography.

In any case, Pullan and Deighton’s overhaul of the interior quelled any jitters. The prow-shaped space is split in two: a red main bar area, edged in curving, oxblood banquettes, a 1960s Guinness tap box, ornate period windows and round tables dappled in rosy sunlight; plus an emerald-hued rear saloon, with a dinky fireplace, vintage Tetley’s adverts and tasteful soul music burbling from a perched Sonos speaker. At 1pm on a Wednesday, there were three beer-supping older guys stood at the bar, sharing a ravaged tankard of prawns and grousing about cycling injuries; evidence of the Laddie’s magnetic field and a reminder that reports of the lunchtime pint’s death have perhaps been somewhat exaggerated.

We began, oddly enough, in the Indian subcontinent rather than the Yorkshire suburbs: halves of vindaloo devilled egg, yolks turned into spiced, rust-orange whippee quiffs, and tandoori chicken drummers, warm, with a tickle of heat, and bearing a humming clipped-lawn of chopped curry leaves. Next came seafood – those Lindisfarne oysters, indecently plump, doused in a fruity version of scotch bonnet Tabasco, and charred, butterflied sardines adrift in a glossy, Bezos-rich trotter gravy.

Lightly glazed sheafs of “sliced ham from the fire” – served with a pair of plump house baked dinner rolls and inspired by the arid, cigarette-wafted joints of butty pork that would once hang above the bar in northern pubs – might be the first recorded instance of a dish being improved by being deconstructed. After that, there was an unusually juicy, golden wave of pork schnitzel, held in place by two fried eggs, glimmering anchovies, and a verdant drenching of caper butter.

The exclamation-mark flavouring approach didn’t always work. Triple-cooked chips came with an exemplary curry sauce but had a gently scarring textural inconsistency. A clattering of goat’s curd, smoked hazelnuts and heather honey did not fully obscure the fact that the roasted carrots delivered an earthy, bottom-of-the-crisper mulch rather than delicate sweetness.

Thankfully, we hauled things back with a pudding we absolutely didn’t need: smoke-wreathed, grilled peaches, gushing fragrant lusciousness on a rubbled heap of sticky pistachio cake pieces. A messy, air-punching power ballad to early summer’s bounty, and a reminder of the limitless possibilities of contemporary pub cooking when a team is empowered to create with genuine verve and freedom.

So many recent restaurant openings seem to orient themselves around the idea that we all want to be transported to pretend Parisian bistros, make-believe Manhattan red-sauce joints, or ersatz izakaya. The implication is that we crave escape. But what if the thing we all really want is just a more thoughtful, impassioned and irreverent engagement with British dining’s more recent, unsung past? The Highland Laddie offers that by the barrel-load and reminds us that, to push forwards, sometimes you need to look back.

We drained our ill-advised third pints, rolled out into the dazzling afternoon sunshine and jointly glanced over our shoulders. Stuffed. Happy. Slightly pissed. And very keen to make sure that this magical little anomaly hadn’t suddenly dematerialised.

The Highland Laddie, 36-38 Cavendish Street, Leeds, LS3 1LY (0113 469 8076; highlandladdie.com). Snacks from £3, mains from £15, desserts from £10, wine from £27