Anna

Cielo Blanco, Leeds

I’ve read a lot of good reviews about Cielo Blanco, so although I’d tired a little of eating and drinking in Trinity Leeds, I suggested to the girls we go back.

It was one of our as-regular-as-we-can-manage Saturday afternoon-into-evening sessions involving cocktails, dinner and more cocktails.

We started by soaking up one of the last sunny afternoons at Livin’ Italy at Granary Wharf, accompanied by pretty pitchers of colourful mediterranean mojitos: raspberries and peach purée, lemon shrub, mint, rum and cedrata topped with limoncello foam.

The riot of colour and flavours continued at Cielo Blanco. You can eat inside the conservatory-style restaurant or outside looking onto the shopping mall, with Trinity’s glass-domed roof overhead. Trees wrapped in festoon lights emerge from tables covered in bright floral cloths.

We arrived at about 5.30, and most of the other guests were shoppers and families. We were overdressed and probably over-loud, but no one seemed to mind too much.

I felt a bit overwhelmed by the menu; it took us ages to choose. Maybe it was the wide selection, maybe the previous cocktails, maybe the hard-to-ignore conversation.

In the end I went for a sharing board, and we also (greedily) made it a ‘feast’ by adding a selection of street food style starters for £5 per person. Our main was rustically presented on a wooden plank resting on two colourful overturned cans. We opted for the free range barbacoa chicken (£11.95 each), which also came with achiote pollo pot stew, corn on the cob, poblano chicken tamale and spring onions.

I’m not sure what all of those things are either, but I do know everything was damn tasty. It all tasted fresh and home-made: the salsa and guacamole contained hunks of vegetables, the tortilla chips were thick, crunchy and only lightly salted and the chicken was full of flavour. You could throw a little bit of everything on your plate or put it all in a wrap. It was pretty good value: for £17 there was plenty of food, especially with the added-on starter too. That said, we did manage to eat nearly all of it.

All in all, it was a really good part of an afternoon/evening out which can’t fail to be fun with this lot. We followed it up with a few more drinks in the Alchemist, then got slightly the wrong train home and met this bloke off the telly.

Have you been to Cielo Blanco?

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