The Best Restaurants in Leeds

The best restaurants in Leeds right now are the Empire Cafe on Fish Street, Bavette in Horsforth and The Smithfield on North Street, the three Leeds names in the Good Food Guide's Best Local Restaurants 2026 list, with Ox Club on The Headrow and Tharavadu on Mill Hill close behind. That is the short answer. The longer one is below, with what to order at each and a few places that never make the national lists but should. Everything here was checked against the restaurants' own listings and the guides in October 2026, so if you are reading this much later, ring ahead.

The Empire Cafe, Fish Street

The Empire Cafe, at 6 Fish Street (LS1 6DB), came 31st in the Good Food Guide Best Local Restaurants 2026. Chef Sam Pullan kept the old name and the ghost sign from the building's past life, and runs it as an all-day cafe that happens to cook like a serious restaurant. Steak and chips is the trademark, and the rotisserie chicken comes off what they call the Wall of Flame. The guide singled out a slow-smoked lamb rump over apricot barbecue sauce and the chicken with schmaltz potatoes. The menu moves every few weeks, so treat any single dish as a clue, not a promise. The downstairs room, all low light and brick, is one of the best dates in town.

Bavette, Town Street, Horsforth

Bavette, at 4 to 6 Town Street in Horsforth (LS18 4RJ), held the top spot in the Good Food Guide's local restaurant list in 2024 and 2025 and came 16th in 2026, which most cities would throw a parade for. It also holds a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin Guide. It is a proper French bistro run by Sandy Jarvis and Clément Cousin. Order the crab tartelette with saffron aioli to start, then the namesake bavette with frites, and do not skip the baguette with herb butter. It is a short hop out to Horsforth, so make an evening of it.

The Smithfield, North Street

The Smithfield, at 76 to 78 North Street (LS2 7PN), took over the old Reliance site as a collaboration between Crooked Brewing and James Donovan, and went straight into the Good Food Guide list at number 80. It cooks nose to tail: think pig's head, ox heart and hogget. The guide's pick is the herb-fed chicken pie in tarragon gravy, served with chips it described as biblically accurate. We are not arguing. Michelin lists it too.

Ox Club, The Headrow

Ox Club opened in 2015 inside Headrow House, in Bramleys Yard off The Headrow, and still does everything over a live-fire grill. Go for the smoked beef tartare with gherkin ketchup, the coal-roast cauliflower and the 400g aged bone-in sirloin if there are two of you, then the burnt Basque cheesecake. Ox Club opens for dinner Tuesday to Friday from 5pm, all day Saturday from noon, and does Sunday lunch from 12pm to 7pm. It is in the Michelin Guide and the Good Food Guide.

Tharavadu, Mill Hill

Tharavadu, at 7 to 8 Mill Hill (LS1 5DQ), a few minutes from the station, cooks the food of Kerala, and its chefs were born, raised and trained there. Order the Adu Cheera Mappas, boneless lamb, the Vazhuthananga aubergine curry and a big paratha. The lunchtime thali comes in under a tenner. Book: everyone else has had the same idea.

The rest of the shortlist

• Stuzzi, 7 Merrion Street. Italian small plates in an upstairs room, with pasta made fresh daily. The burnt aubergine arancino is the thing people text their mates about.
• Wen's, 72 to 74 North Street. Home-style Chinese cooking. Mrs Wen makes the dumplings herself, and the chicken thighs with homemade chilli oil and the hand-pulled Beijing-style noodles are why you go back.
• Hern, 5 Stainbeck Corner, Chapel Allerton. Rab Adams runs this one, with tasting menus that change often. A proper neighbourhood restaurant that happens to be very good.
• Zucco, 603 Meanwood Road, Meanwood. Italian small plates with rotating specials. Salt cod ravioli, Nonna's polpette spaghetti and the tiramisu.
• Chef Jono at V&V, 68 New Briggate. Chef Jono at V&V is a monthly tasting menu from Jono Hawthorne, a MasterChef: The Professionals finalist, in an intimate room where you can talk to the chef.
• Kendells Bistro, 3 St Peter's Square. Classic French, chalkboard menu, candles. Beef cheek in red wine with creamed potatoes, and a French onion soup that could end arguments.

Worth the bus

Prashad, at 137 Whitehall Road in Drighlington, is a Gujarati-heritage vegetarian restaurant with its own Bib Gourmand, and the drive out is part of the ritual. For a pub that cooks like a restaurant, The Highland Laddie on Cavendish Street, from the Empire Cafe team, was named Britain's best pub by the Good Food Guide in 2025. And if you want the big blowout, The Box Tree in Ilkley has been doing tasting menus in an 18th-century building for longer than most of us have been eating out.

How to get a table

Leeds has no Michelin star at the time of writing, which says more about Michelin than about Leeds: the Bib Gourmands and the Good Food Guide rankings are where the action is. Book Bavette, Tharavadu and the Empire Cafe a week or more ahead for a Friday or Saturday. And when in doubt, eat early: most of these kitchens are at their sharpest at 6pm, before the room fills. For more ideas, the Leeds-List restaurant guide is a decent second opinion.