Everything in Leeds Tastes Better in Bread

There’s something happening in Leeds. Something that doesn’t need a trend piece to validate it, a pop-up to announce it, or a supermarket to eventually ruin it. Leeds has always eaten well between two pieces of something. But right now, the city’s relationship with things in bread has reached a new kind of intensity. Reverent, even. This isn’t fast food. This is craft, culture, and obsession folded into something you can eat standing up.

Let’s start where it gets interesting.

Sqew has been one of Leeds’ best-kept secrets, hiding in plain sight on Duncan Street since 2021. The question was never whether the shawarma was good. The question was whether Leeds was ready to take it seriously. The answer, it turns out, was yes, and then some. The buzz around the place hasn’t faded, and on any given afternoon, the small, lively space fills quickly with people queuing for freshly shaved shawarma, fragrant spices and bold Middle Eastern flavours. But Sqew’s new menu, launching Monday, represents something more considered than momentum. Earlier this year, Mitch travelled to Lebanon specifically to research their next move, and the result is the full introduction of saj bread. Saj (also known as markouk) is the ultimate shawarma bread, light, thin, and built for wrapping. It’s a street food staple in Beirut and Damascus, but it’s rarely seen with shawarma here in the UK. Sqew have been teasing it for months, posting videos, talking about it, building the anticipation. Now it’s finally the main event. That’s not a menu update. That’s a philosophy arriving on schedule.

Not far away, tucked into the Grade II listed Grand Arcade, Alfonso’s Bodega Deli has been quietly causing scenes since opening last year. Alfonso’s comes from the team behind Koben Smokehouse and Thiccc Sauce, with a strong New York and Miami influence, and its Cubanos are made with slow-smoked mojo pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and house sauce, pressed and toasted to order. The recipe has a genuine origin story: friends in Miami, originally from Cuba and the Dominican Republic, passed it down, with the pork smoked low and slow over applewood at their Holbeck HQ. The deli draws queues that form fast and sell out faster, with customers reporting waits of 40 minutes that they’d happily do again. It’s also, in the spirit of a proper bodega, somewhere you can pick up a newspaper, or a Cuban cigar alongside your lunch. 

Across town, in the unlikely but increasingly excellent setting of Sunnybank Mills in Farsley, another kind of bread obsession has taken root. La Grassa is a new Italian-American Paninoteca and diner concept from Stuzzi co-founders Jimbob Phillips and Brett Lee, serving paninos filled with house-made meats, cheeses and sauces from what was previously Amity Brew Co’s brewing floor. The sandwiches read like a love letter to a specific kind of Italian-American excess: dry-aged striploin with bone marrow and beer rarebit; porchetta with nduja, friarielle and pickled chilli; the mortadella named for Bourdain, sliced thin with anchovy butter and whipped ricotta. By day it’s hearty sandwiches and light bites, and in the evenings more substantial plates sit alongside Amity’s craft beers. It’s a serious operation dressed casually, which is exactly what a great sandwich shop should be.

On the horizon: Granny G’s Deli, the forthcoming project from JB, one half of the much-loved Little Bao Boy, who is bringing his own interpretation of the format to Leeds. Details are still emerging, but given the pedigree, expectations are high.

Then there’s Fuji Hiro, which is a story in itself before you even get to the sandwiches. Leeds’ original Japanese restaurant, open since 1997, closed suddenly in early 2025 after nearly three decades of trading. The city’s reaction said everything about what the place meant. It was brought back by Leeds-born entrepreneur James Douglas, co-founder of Red’s True Barbecue, who acquired the lease and worked with the original kitchen team to revive the recipes, stocks and curry blends that made it special. Now back at the Merrion Centre and building again, Fuji Hiro has been doing something quietly exciting alongside its classic ramen and gyoza: a weekly specials rotation built around the sandwich. Softshell crab sandos. Katsu sandos. The kind of dishes that use bread the way Japanese convenience stores always intended, as a precise, considered frame for something deeply cooked. Worth following on Instagram to keep track of what’s coming.

The salt beef sandwich deserves its own conversation. Elbows on the Table, a fairly new establishment, are doing authentic salt beef the way it should be done, slow-cured, properly built, uncompromising in a city that has historically had to travel to find the real thing. And then there’s Silver’s Deli in Bramley, which by this point needs very little introduction but deserves it anyway. Founded in 2023 by Chris Riley, Silver’s beat more than 130 nominated restaurants to win the Uber Eats Restaurant of the Year, taking home £100,000 to invest back into the business. Just recently, Marco Pierre White, the first person to win and then voluntarily return three Michelin stars, drove 300 miles to Bramley to try the goods. His verdict, delivered on camera: “Exceptional cuisine. Worthy of the journey.” Now, Silver’s is expanding, with a sister site, Silver’s Bakehouse, set to open on Town Street in Farsley this spring. The sandwich shop that started as a corner spot named after Chris’s daughter is becoming a proper Leeds institution.

And completing some of the picture, the Things in Bread group, which also has Doh Hut and BAKE, have been doing exactly what the name suggests: taking their best bread and finding the most interesting things to put inside it. What makes it interesting? Not the regular queues out the door, but the regular specials. No hierarchy, no fuss, just a simple acknowledgement that a great white loaf deserves a great filling.

This is not, it should be said, a listicle. This is not “Leeds’ 47 Best Sandwiches Ranked,” with a stock photo of a baguette at the top and affiliate links to a meal-delivery service at the bottom. But if it were, the honourable mentions would be considerable and the arguments would be fierce. Shokupan, for the Japanese milk bread alone. Morty’s Focacceria, doing things with focaccia that should probably require planning permission. Brød Sandwich Bar, bringing restraint to a city that doesn’t always do restraint. Cheesy Living Co and their in-house bakery Fold, whose focaccia has quietly become one of the most talked-about pieces of bread in Leeds. Manjit’s Kitchen, whose chilli paneer wrap has been making the case for plant-based sandwiches long before it was fashionable. Miles & Co on Kirkgate have been quietly doing the thing properly for anyone who knows: solid sandwiches from 11am, a Jambon Beurre that earns its place on any shortlist, and bread from Bluebird in Kirkgate Market keeping the whole thing grounded in something local and real. And The Galley Delicatessen, which would be on any serious list and deserves to be on far more of them than it currently appears. Consider this a formal acknowledgement. The list doesn’t exist. But if it did, you’d need a whole week free.

So what is it about Leeds and bread? Part of it is practical. This is a city that eats on the move, that works long hours, that has always valued substance over theatre. But part of it is something more particular to this moment. Leeds has a generation of chefs and operators who have trained at serious restaurants, travelled specifically to eat, and come back wanting to channel that into something accessible. The sandwich, or the wrap, the panino, the sando, the saj, is the perfect vehicle for that. It’s democratic without being dumbed down. It rewards craft without demanding ceremony.

From Lebanese flatbreads researched in Beirut to salt beef, from vodka chicken parms and legendary chefs making 300-mile pilgrimages, Leeds is making some of the most considered bread-based food in the country right now. You don’t need a reservation. You just need to show up hungry.

Maybe we can talk about things on bread next?