10:24am Monday 29th June 2009
By Jon Cheetham
Leon, the fast-food chain where the food not only tastes good but does you good, has opened its first restaurant outside London at Bluewater.
Based on the conviction that good, seasonal food should be a right and not a privilege, Leon promises a menu naturally full of flavour, sourced from trusted farms in the UK.
Because it is essentially a fast-food concept, meals are served quickly in brown cardboard boxes with plastic cutlery. This makes it the ideal place for the hungry shopper to stop and refuel or grab something to take away.
They offer a breakfast menu too, serving sausage and bacon baps and porridge until 11am. We went along in the evening when they do a dinner service using knives and forks.
The friendly staff weren’t fazed by the site of me wheeling in a double-decker buggy and came straight over with a high chair, toys and crayons for the children.
After reading through the menu listing about half-a-dozen main meal options as well as various starters, sides, salads and wraps, I filled in our order slip and took it to the counter.
The flexible ordering system means you can have your meal just how you want it, either course by course or all at once like tapas.
We opted to share a Thai chicken curry (£5.95), sweet potato falafel with aioli (£5.30), hot chargrilled chorizo with marinated olives (£4.40) and a green sunshine salad of minted peas edamame and French beans (£2.35). The girls had meatballs in tomato sauce from the children’s menu (£3.50).
The curry, falafel and meatballs all came with brown rice and a coarse and crunchy coleslaw that was all the better for the sparing use of mayonnaise.
My wife raved all the way home about the sweet potato falafel which was gently spiced with cumin and fresh herbs, while I couldn’t stop smacking my lips when recalling the Catalan chorizo glistening with piggy fat.
There is a limited but thoughtful and competitively priced wine list, with Zinfandel at £4 a glass and a house Chardonnay at £3.50.
Still nursing a bit of a hangover from the weekend we decided to pass on the wine in favour of refreshing cloudy apple juice with lime and mint and fresh lemonade at £1.50 a glass.
Thank goodness we saved a bit of room for pudding because the chocolate brownies served with vanilla ice cream were out of this world (£4.50). There is a belief at Leon that you can have your cake and eat it, so the brownies are reduced GI, made from dark chocolate and ground almonds instead of flour, chopped walnuts, orange and fruit sugar. The tangy lemon ginger crunch with ice cream was also a big hit.
Given the quality of the ingredients and variety of delicious dishes available, Leon is very well priced. To call it fast food seems a bit unfair because it tastes so good. But fast food it is and anybody who loves good food would be happy to see a Leon over traditional deep-fried offerings on their local high street.
Leon dining offer
To celebrate the new store opening, come into Leon Bluewater and try the fast, fresh menu for yourself with this dining offer exclusive to News Shopper readers.
Print out the voucher and take it into Leon to claim 25 per cent off the price of your next meal:
Voucher terms and conditions: Voucher only valid after 6pm Monday to Friday. Expiry date July 10.
For any more information visit leonrestaurants.co.uk or bluewater.co.uk, or call 01322 623300.
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