36 Cavendish Street
Burley
Leeds
LS3 1LY
nowthen@highlandladdie.com
Traditional Town Pub, 1* Heritage Pub
The Highland Laddie created quite a stir when it reopened in April 2025, with rave reviews from food and pub critics, and won the Good Food Guide’s Britain’s Best Pub award before the end of the year. So what’s all the fuss about? Owners Nicole Deighton and Sam Pullen have created the unlikely combination of traditional ‘proper’ pub and a bistro with first rate food. The changing weekly menu lists three or four ‘main’ courses but the focus is on smaller dishes like smoked mussels, barbecued sardines and cheese pie. Bar snacks include oysters, devilled eggs and sausage rolls. Food prices are higher than those in the average pub but probably not excessive. Having said that, when our group decided to try a sausage roll and found they cost £7 each there was a Yorkshire chorus of “‘Ow much?”
The beer’s pretty good as well, with Kirkstall Three Swords as a regular and three changing cask beers. The Guinness is celebrated here, and is served using a three part pour, so you’ll have to wait a while for your pint. The glasses rest on top of the vintage red Guinness box on the counter during the pour and I’m told that it’s well worth the wait. On keg are a house lager, a weissbier and a couple of pale ales, and there’s a decent selection of whiskies.
Turn left after the entrance for the red ceilinged bar with bench seating and a few tables facing the bar counter. On the right is smallish dining area painted in green where you can book a table, though you are free to sit at any unreserved space.
This has always been a proper pub of course and the layout now is the same as when it was a Tetley pub called the Highland, well known for the quality of its ale. I remember making the 20 minute walk from the city centre a few times, usually stopping off at the nearby Fox and Newt which had its own brewery. Tetley’s are remembered with an original inn sign and some old posters on the wall of the dining room.
The Laddie is a great addition to Leeds both as a pub and a restaurant and it’s the way that it has so successfully combined the two that make it so good.
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