Relaxed fine-dining from Masterchef's Liz Cottam & Michelin-starred Mark Owens is finally here
Well guys, it’s finally here. We’ve been tipping this to be one of the biggest openings of 2017 ever since trying their pop-up in February, and now HOME has finally found a home of its own.
The brainchild of MasterChef 2016 semi-finalist Liz Cottam and former head chef of Michelin-star restaurants The Box Tree and The Star at Harome Mark Owens, HOME brings Modern British food commonly associated with “fine dining” out of the prim and formal atmosphere and make it a more relaxed, and welcoming, and accessible experience.
“When I ran the residency at The New Ellington – people commented that it felt like they’d been invited round to my home for dinner because I took the time to give everyone a warm welcome, explain every dish and focus our service on making people feel relaxed and ‘at home’ whilst they were with us.” says Liz, whose approach to service has been influenced by some of the world’s best restaurants, including New York’s Eleven Madison Park.
This means guests are assigned a host to guide them through the entire evening, starting with an introduction the day before the booking, and introducing each dish from the 3, 5, or 10 course tasting menu on the evening, as well as an expert sommelier in hand to recommend the perfect wine pairings for each course.
To make the best possible experience accessible to as many guests as possible, each bottle of wine comes with a flat rate corkage, rather than employing restaurant's’ usual 200% mark-up rule, so the more you spend, the better deal you’re actually getting - at least that’s what we kept telling ourselves as our gaze wandered to the pricier end of the list…
Leeds local Liz was keen to use ingredients and produce with local provenance and a real story behind it, so the menu will include seasonal vegetables and game from the Harewood estate just down the road, and eventually vegetables and herbs grown on the restaurants rooftop garden.
August’s menu “quite unashamedly” celebrates classic British ingredients; the season’s sweetest peas, juiciest strawberries, ripest heirloom tomatoes all appear in various forms, from as nature intended to baked into a macaron or a sponge (and not the one you might expect). We say “August’s menu” because the tasting menus (regular and vegetarian) changes every month to give people a reason to come back as often as they’d like to, and have a different experience each time.
If that wasn’t enough work for Liz and Mark, HOME also offers Sunday lunch in the form of a tasting menu, and special ‘guinea pig” events where the adventurers among us can pay a fixed rat to be treated to an unspecified number of the kitchen’s more experimental and in-development dishes.
Early indications from preview evenings have been overwhelmingly positive, with the kitchen and the dining room staff hitting the floor running, and some incredible touches of attention to detail that we won’t spoil for you. If you want to be one of the first to experience HOME, check availability and book here
HOME 16/17 Kirkgate, LS1 6BY. Opens Friday 18 August. Bookings.
