Eating out isn't something I tend to talk much about on this little slice of the internet. Which is kinda strange as its something I spend a slightly unhealthy amount of my life doing, I like to try my hardest to make sure any catch up, activity or day out fits around some sort of nice meal (or cake...) wherever possible. Leeds is spoiling my food obsessed little belly these days, there are so many new restaurants popping up all over the place so my list of places to try is getting longer and longer (perfect excuse to eat out even more!).
My foodie friend Coral and I went for a slightly fancier than usual meal earlier this week at Roast and Conch, a new restaurant run by Hotel Chocolat, as we'd been intrigued by the whole chocolate-food thing since it opened a few months ago. As soon as we walked up the stairs,an incredible smell of chocolate filled the room, so as far as I was concerned the night was off to a great start!
Most people I've mentioned the restaurant to have greeted me with a confused look of "Why would you want to eat chocolate with a meal?" but its as far away from that idea as you could possibly get! Most of the dishes are infused with roasted cocoa beans and WOW it works- the cocoa is more like a spice when its cooked like this and it gave my meal such an incredible flavour!
We were given a butternut squash soup as a bit of an amuse bouche (I'm definitely not posh enough to be able to say that normally!) which was really yummy. I picked the burger as my main course because there'd be something seriously wrong if Kaz went to a restaurant with a burger on the menu and didn't order it. Being a massive burger obsessive, I feel I can say with confidence that this was without a doubt in my top 3 burgers ever list (yes I have a list... don't judge me!). But the real showstopper with my meal were the onion rings that came with my burger and the chips we ordered as a side on the recommendation of the girl who showed us to her table who said they were by far the best thing on the menu! They were cooked in cocoa butter and OH MY GOD they were incredible and didn't taste anything like something that you'd find on the shelves of The Body Shop!
Given that I'd wolfed down my whole meal plus the chips we definitely didn't really need (but couldn't have lived without!) in record time, I was saddened to admit that I wasn't going to have room for dessert. It seemed like a crime against chocolate given the restaurant we were in as I can imagine the desserts would have been bloomin' incredible, but Roast & Conch have clearly thought long and hard about this problem so they created a 'Tray of Temptation' filled with every flavour of chocolate you could possibly ever imagine for £1 each. Funnily enough, despite my fullness, I still had room for chocolate and decided I couldn't narrow it down to just one either. I ended up with a salted caramel chocolate (which they gave me two of because it was a bit smaller than some of the others) and a raspberry and milk chocolate cup. Its amazing how quickly I forgot about having a 'proper' dessert.
If you're in Leeds and fancy somewhere a little different and a bit special (or if you've been sent a 20% off voucher through work like Coral had!), I'd definitely recommend a trip to Roast & Conch. It was one of those meals that I'll be dreaming about for months to come!
That sounds really fun and certainly worth trying, I've heard a lot recently about cooking traditional, or at least normal meals with chocolate, must be the in thing!
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