Back in August, when my other half was visiting, we went on a trip to Leeds to go to the Royal Armouries, to walk around the city centre and get some food.

We hadn’t completely decided on where to go for food and I knew there were so many options that it would make sense to go with wherever we spotted that sounded good. And eventually we stumbled across Pieminister a spot I had sent social media posts for and we had said at some point perhaps we should go. So upon finding it that’s exactly what we did.

The starters were probably the best bit of the meal. Which, given they didn’t involve pies, is never a good sign. We selected three for £14 but they would usually be £4.90 each so you’re only making a saving of 70p so hardly a discount worth shouting from the rooftops.

The honey and mustard cocktail sausages were lovely little bites of flavourful meaty joy, even if the fat content was obviously on the higher side and did result in a bit of a mouth coating afterwards.

I adore padron peppers with sea salt. However, they were not the best padron peppers I’d ever had done this way in a restaurant. They could very easily have been charred a little longer and there was what felt like oil on the outside of them which makes absolutely no sense for how they are usually cooked. I also find them to be incredible when paired with toasted almonds like I had at The Antelope in Tooting many years ago (here’s a link to my old blog with that review).

The pork scratchings however were absolutely fantastic. Crunchy but not overly crunchy, a porky punch of flavour and paired perfectly with the chunky apple sauce. If I could have got a bag of these to take home then I absolutely would have done.

For drinks I went for the salted caramel oatshake for £5.50. This vegan shake was very tasty and I loved how obvious the salted caramel flavour was and the oat milk didn’t overwhelm the palette but mixed with the caramel they blended delightfully together.

However, and this is a big however, for £5.50 I expect a decent amount of milkshake not something of this size to be 50% froth. Thinking about other chain places that do burgers or other basic style pub food as their thing (pies are pub food to me) they almost always come in bigger glasses than this and if they don’t they are at least all liquid for a similar price point. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind froth. 10% froth for this size glass would have been far more acceptable than what turned up.

As for the mains. Ah the mains. Well, my other half got a classic moo pie (£8.70) with a “super side” of smoky baked beans but given they couldn’t be eaten because they were undercooked and just not pleasant to each there is nothing super about them (especially for £4.70).

It’s not difficult when cooking something like beans to gently test one for resistance to know if it’s cooked and I’m surprised the chef didn’t do that or there isn’t a standard procedure in place for checking they are actually cooked. It came across as careless, not interested and rushing too much to care about the actual food or experience for diners.

In hindsight I should have raised it with the waiting staff, who also seemed a bit uninterested in being there and serving us, and asked for it to be refired, an alternative or had the cost removed off the bill but I’m not a Karen and feel too socially awkward to do that.

For my own main I went for the moo and blue but as part of the “Sunday Best” for £14.50. This includes your pie of choice, mashed potato, Yorkshire pudding, some mini roast potatoes and carrot (and swede but I detest swede so asked for it to be kept off and thankfully it was), gravy and according to the menu a mini sausage and crackling as well (but she asked me about options and I said halloumi, I thought this was an extra not an instead).

The halloumi was good but if they had messed up halloumi then I would have been incredibly concerned. The Yorkshire pudding was decent enough as well. The gravy was just standard UK gravy at a reasonable thickness but I could have done with a bit more of it for some elements of my dish.

The mini roast potatoes and carrots were just cooked but had a bit of bite and whilst I knew they were going to be small I wasn’t expecting to be so small that there was no crispy outside and fluffy inside so that was incredibly disappointing.

I found the mash to be very average and it could have done with a bit extra creaminess or something to give it some fluffiness, as you can see from the above photo it is a bit dense and made into a disc to be a support for the pie instead. Maybe the chef just isn’t good with potatoes to mess two potato elements up a bit.

The filling of my pie was fantastic. It had a good ratio of beef to blue cheese and the cheese flavour was subtle but obvious in each bite. Luckily, I don’t mind onion and filler items in my pie but this wasn’t mentioned on the menu and I can think of a few people that hate cooked onion in meals and that could have been a real dealbreaker for them. They didn’t even add anything in terms of taste, depth of flavour or texture to the pie. They were very much just a filler to reduce the amount of beef by a chunk each pie.

The pastry of the pie was okay but it was on the thicker side and sometimes a thick pastry is perfectly okay for a pie but this was one of the drier and more crumbly feeling pastries when you took a bite. This is one of the reasons I wish I had more gravy. If you’re going to have that texture of pastry it really needs to be rolled a lot thinner. If you want it that thick then add more butter to it or something because as it was this pie just felt needlessly heavy.

I have had significantly better pies from local independent cafes, diners and bistros where pie isn’t at all what they specialise in and they charge a lot less. They also usually give you a full not 50% froth drink as well and they know how to do some good mashed potato.

I wish I could but based on my experience I really cannot recommend Pieminister based on the food and the price point combined.