Source:
Yummy Leeds! (no áudio)
The northern city of Leeds is in an unusual position. On the one hand, it is “the gateway” to Yorkshire, England’s largest (and, some people would say, most beautiful) country, And yet Leeds is not really on the tourist trail: the nearby city of York is smaller and more picturesque. In terms of size and history, Leeds is more similar to its Lancashire rivals Liverpool and Manchester, but they enjoy greater cultural recognition (because of their associations with respectively, The Beatles, and the “Madchester” scene).
FESTIVAL FEVER
Leeds is therefore working hard to put itself on the map. This could explain why it organised the “Leeds Loves Food” festival in July. The festival revolved around two main areas: there were entertaining cookery demonstrations (by celebrity chefs” like James Martin, a Yorkshireman) in the city’s Millennium Square, and there as a splendid food fair, organised by the Harvey Nichols department store, in the historic Victoria Quarter. This was a showcase for such Yorkshire delights as seafood (see interview, bellow), beef and ham, but also for more ethnic produce. Kitchen Guru, for example, is a company that makes pre-packaged spices for fans of Indian cuisine. Leeds has many fine Indian restaurants (such as The Bird, near the Royal Armouries) and diversity is one of the strong points of the British culinary experience. One of Leeds’ “hottest” restaurants these days is Casa Mia (in Chapel Allerton), run by an engaging Neapolitan who has made Yorkshire his home.
Source: Speak Up
Language level: Upper intermediate
Speaker: Mark Worden
Standard: British accent
It’ Getting Better!
This summer Speak Up attended the “Leeds Loves Food Festival” in Yorkshire. Britain doesn’t exactly enjoy a good culinary reputation around the world and many continental Europeans might find the idea of a British food festival strange. And yet attitudes to food in Britain have definitely changed over the last few years. We spoke to one of the festival’s participants, Jonathan Batchelor, of the Ramus Seafood emporium in Harrogate. He talked about improving British attitudes towards food:
Jonathan Batchelor
(Standard: English/Yorkshire accent)
The nation has changed, I think, a little bit. People are interested in good food, they might have gone abroad to places like Spain and Italy and France and eaten there and seen the culture over there. Whereby good food is not just something that you do at mealtimes, it’s something that you experience as part of your life and your enjoyment and people have brought that back home with them and also, you know, we’re waking up to the availability of great produce in our own country. You just have to look on television to see the number of food programmes promoting product. I mean, we’re here today promoting seven fantastic British seafood products that we should be absolutely proud of and everybody should be eating and there are things like that, you know, all over the country, you know, little local independent suppliers of this, that and the other, and we should be celebrating the great product that we have in this country and I think more and more we do, people are much more willing to eat and there’s much more of a café culture developing and, you know, it’s changed, I think, dramatically in the last 20 years.
