Restaurant review: El Gato Negro, Leeds

The restaurant is located on Park Row in Leeds in a beautiful old stone-clad former bank. It's quite dark inside, but the interior is very stylish, and it's a great setting for a date night.

We had an early booking at 6pm because we were going to the cinema afterwards, but the restaurant was still busy and had a great atmosphere.

Initially we had to wait a little while to order, but the lady serving us told us that, like so many other restaurants, they were short-staffed and struggling with recruitment. It was also one of her first shifts, and she did a great job, and of course we didn't mind having to wait.

You can't go to a Tapas restaurant and not order Padron peppers! These were great but they were so hot. I’m not great with food that is too spicy and some of these were a bit of a challenge, but we persevered.

We also had some Manchego, another ‘must order’ with a tapas meal, and this was drizzled with honey and served with sweet pickled figs.

Next up I had the Catalan bread with olive oil, garlic, fresh tomato and jamón serrano. This was easily my favourite thing we ordered, I could eat it every day! All the flavours worked so well together. And because the jamón serrano was so good, we ordered an extra plate of this.

For hot food, we went for chicken skewers, caramelised cauliflower in a harissa-spiced sauce with chickpeas, gambas al ajillo, and patatas bravas. These were all delicious, especially the prawns which came with caramelised onions and peppers in a garlic sauce.

Unfortunately we had to get to the cinema so no time for desserts 😢

But overall we had a great meal, and if you've never been, it's definitely somewhere I'd recommend!