From York to Leeds

Saturday, June 07th , 2025

Kalpakavadi is a Keralan restaurant in York. It is a friendly, family-run place with some quite enjoyable dishes such as a good uttapam, but also one dud fish dish. It is inexpensive, so worth considering if in the city, even given the inconsistency that we experienced.

Roots is a starred restaurant and delivered a generally good, though lengthy (four-hour) tasting menu when we visited. Service was a little stretched this evening, and prices are pretty much in London territory, including the wine list with its surprisingly high markups. 

Dastaan Leeds was the highlight of the trip for me. This is the sister of the original Dastaan in Ewell, and the recipes from there are recreated carefully and diligently. It was hard to tell some of the dishes apart from the rendition of the original. It is quite a large restaurant, so all the more impressive that this level of cooking is produced at scale. I highly recommend it.