Six By Nico, Leeds – Sunday Roast Restaurant Review

By Steve Crabtree, October 2024

Weekends come with all the highlights, don’t they? A film on Friday night, a lie-in on Saturday, and a few drinks with your mates later on. Then, on Sunday… cooking that Sunday dinner and sitting around the table to eat is the pinnacle of the weekend.

This Sunday, however, my wife Alex and I were in Leeds visiting one of our favourite spots in the city, Six by Nico, to check out their Sunday Roast menu. We’ve eaten there a few times over the past 18 months, and it’s a place we love. We enjoy their wacky and creatively themed menus, so this one really appealed to us.

This was a five-course set menu, with an optional Yorkshire pudding sixth course available for a supplement. We arrived for our 12:30 pm sitting, our jackets were taken, and we were left in the capable hands of Grace, who looked after us very well for the next couple of hours.

Let’s eat…

After getting comfortable and glancing over the menu, we were offered a little aperitif to quench any thirst we might have built up thinking about our Sunday dinner. I opted for an Aperol Spritz (£9), while Alex chose the £11 Orange Negroni cocktail. The Negroni certainly packed a punch but tasted beautiful all the same.

Grace offered to talk us through how things worked at Six by Nico, but as we were ‘seasoned’ diners at this wonderful place, she quickly recapped that we’d be enjoying a series of courses with wine pairings, and the first course would be with us shortly.

“Strong start”

As expected with a menu that’s never conventionally titled, our first course was the Roast Beef Donut. The name alone sparks excitement, and when it’s served, you can’t wait to dig in. Beautifully presented, it sat neat and proud, centrally on the black plate, with a small slice of mushroom stalk delicately placed on top.

To my surprise, the outer texture, which I expected to be scotch-egg-like, was actually more like a dumpling, with delicious 24-hour braised beef shin inside. Alongside the crisp onion was a very tasty bed of black garlic ketchup. This opener was simply delightful.

Beefy flavours flooded out with each delicate bite, and the soft, almost melt-in-the-mouth beef was a real highlight. It was a strong start to our meal, packed with flavour, and we were very happy with how our day had begun.

Once again, I was pleased to have a table that allowed us to glance into the kitchen.

Watching this fantastic food being prepped never fails to amaze me. The intricate detail that each chef applies to deliver these picture-perfect dishes is all part of the Six by Nico attraction. For our second course, we were treated to their version of Cauliflower Cheese.

This time, the non-convention came in the dish itself. The main focus was a hen’s egg (closer to a scotch egg than the last course!), served in a shallow bath of cauliflower velouté.

“Perfectly cooked”

Sliced open, it was served in a Cheddar Royale. This packed a considerable punch, adding a flow of flavour just before you took a bite.

It was another course I thoroughly enjoyed. A soft, perfectly cooked egg that was hard not to devour in seconds.

This dish was paired with our first wine of the afternoon, a delightfully light Spanish white called Macabeo Verdejo. Crisp and refreshing, I could easily have had more!

Now, roast potatoes. They have to be fluffy in the middle and crunchy on the outside, right? Of course I’m right.

Well, Six by Nico certainly piled the pressure on themselves by calling course three the Ultimate Roast Potato. It HAD to be good. And what they did was something else entirely.

The course was elevated by being served with an abundance of shoestring fries sprinkled over the potato. I couldn’t stop talking about them for days; they were incredible. There were loads of them too, which made for a very pleasant eat!

“Friendly”

I’m not sure if they still exist, but years ago, there was a snack called Mini Chips by KP. These were tiny sticks of potato that looked like they had nothing to them but were small, tasty, and moreish. The shoestring fries were exactly like them! My wife, I, and the table beside us loved them. We could have eaten a whole bowl, then another, and yet another as a grazing snack.

So, we had the crispy crunch, but did we get the soft, fluffy side too?

We did, with a duck fat fondant potato that was perfectly prepared and brought the softness needed for this ‘ultimate roastie’. A worthy title? Absolutely. In fact, it won Alex’s Course of the Day award.

Alongside another delicious sauce, the rarebit worked nicely to finish off the course. Our glass of Romanian Feteasca Regala paired well with it.

Halfway through dinner, we were thoroughly enjoying our visit to Six by Nico again. I love the fact that the atmosphere here is made by happy diners. Although it’s a fine dining restaurant, the relaxed vibe means you can enjoy good food and still be yourself. Exactly what you want on a Sunday.

That’s reinforced by the staff, who are knowledgeable, friendly, and down-to-earth. They’re as much of an attraction as the creative menus themselves.

“Added element”

Grace didn’t just serve us; she joined in the conversation. Alex and I love upbeat chat, and she was more than happy to join in. Informative about the food and wine, with a lovely sense of humour to boot.

We’ve always had great service from the staff at Six by Nico, and Grace was right up there with the best of them.

Now, here’s the contentious bit. Yorkshire pudding is a staple of a Sunday roast, right? In fact, it can make or break the meal, and it needs to be the star of the show.

So why Six by Nico makes it an optional course is beyond me as a Yorkshireman! Nevertheless, we indulged in the £9 per person supplement (or £7 if you’re not having wine).

What was brought to us was a small Yorkshire pudding stuffed with creamed potatoes, served in a truffle café au lait. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the Yorkshire that was the star of this dish, but the punch of flavour from the Lyonnaise onion hiding at the bottom. You won’t believe it until you try it, but that added element really made this course pop, and we both noticed it at the same time.

The Australian red wine served with the course was lovely too, and it was our first red of the day. As someone who doesn’t really enjoy red wine, I found this one delightful. Alex, who’s more of a red wine connoisseur, enjoyed it too. Fairly light and fruity, the glasses were piling up at this point as we politely sipped the vino rather than downing it.

By the way, the wine pairing is well worth doing – they make perfect selections to complement their lovely food.

“Right combination”

When you eat at Six by Nico, after three or four courses, you might worry about leaving the restaurant hungry.

But that never happens. And when the fifth course came in, that was the one where you felt the stomach filling up.

The Ultimate Roast Chicken plate competed fiercely with the donut opener. In front of us this time was a lovely cut of succulent chicken crown topped with a crumb, alongside honey carrot, barbecued hispi cabbage, and carrot top pesto.

It arrived with perhaps the best presentation of the evening, and the combination of everything on the plate worked so well together. It’s times like this when you realise that a good chef knows that the right combination is key. I wasn’t a fan of the pesto on its own, but when combined with everything else, it worked nicely.

The crumb on top gave a lovely texture, and it was perhaps the plate I savoured the most.

After our second red (a Perdu Beugrande Merlot from France), and leaving nothing on our plates, did we have room for dessert…? Of course we did…

The last leg of this Sunday roast journey was the neatest Eton Mess I’ve ever seen. It looked simply delightful, especially for Alex, who considers Eton Mess one of her favourite desserts.

“Sugary goodness”

You might think Eton Mess doesn’t work unless all the elements are mixed up together, but trust me – it does. Perhaps even more so than the traditional version. The cool, the bitter, the sweet, and the crunchy segments of this dish gave us a lovely, tasty way to end our latest visit to Six by Nico.

Our final glass of wine was an Il Furetto, a light Italian red, crisp and fizzy. I love the dessert wines here and always look forward to that last glass. Very easy to drink, low in alcohol, and the perfect pairing for the last course and all its sugary goodness.

So, job done. Sunday dinner: complete. All six courses, five glasses of wine, and an aperitif each. Slightly tipsy, nicely replete, and incredibly satisfied. Our final verdict? Fantastic.

I wouldn’t have thought of Six by Nico offering a Sunday roast menu, but they really pulled it out of the bag, just as they do with all their menus.

Our visit was perfect, as usual. You never really want to leave; you’d happily stay a bit longer, have another drink, and relax.

But, like with every Sunday dinner, you need to get yourself on the couch and sleep it off. Bonus though – no washing up! So, it was time to head home.

The great news is this limited-time Sunday Roast menu has just been extended until the end of November. There’s an alternative vegetarian menu if that’s your preference, but either way – get it while you can. It’s definitely worth trying.

The limited edition five-course Sunday Roast tasting menu is £35pp, with a supplement for Yorkshire Pudding.
Matching wines are £27pp.  

Six By Nico, 9 E Parade, Leeds LS1 2AJ

Mon 4:30pm – 11:45pm
Tue Closed
Wed & Thu: 4:30pm – 11:45pm
Fri – Sun: 12pm – 11:45pm

sixbynico.co.uk
T: 0113 340 6666