'You’ve just got to back yourself': Meet the chef putting Bavette on Leeds’ food map

Just a few months after opening Bavette in Horsforth, Sandy Jarvis and his husband, Clement Cousin, had already won one of the biggest accolades in British food.

The restaurant was crowned Best Local Restaurant in the UK by the Good Food Guide in 2024, making Bavette the “youngest” ever to receive the award.

“We were really delighted by how busy we were from the beginning and how much people liked it. We never expected it,” Sandy told the Yorkshire Evening Post.

“We won Best Local Restaurant in the UK. I think we’d been open three months or something. I mean, I’m still kind of slightly in shock about that.”

Sandy has always loved cooking. Growing up, he remembers family meals, including his mother’s Sunday lunches, in a household that often entertained.

It was while at university that he decided to take the step into hospitality. He trained in London and France, spending 15 years in the capital’s busy restaurant world before returning to Leeds.

“I find running a restaurant in Leeds much more enjoyable,” he said.

“People are really proud of the restaurants, they’re really proud of the independent scene, and so there’s real buy-in from the customers, which is a really lovely thing. As soon as they walk through the door, they want it to be good.”

Sandy opened Bavette on Town Street in Horsforth with Clement in early 2024, with the accolades beginning to arrive just months later.

Opening a French restaurant in Horsforth was perhaps not without risk. But Leeds, Sandy believes, is an ideal home for exciting independents like Bavette.

“It is a hard time everywhere to run restaurants, but I think that being in a place where, if you can be confident that you’re doing a good thing, then you’ll hopefully be all right,” he said.

“Compared to being in a city where lots of great restaurants close all the time just because it’s completely oversaturated.”

The food served is classical French bistro cuisine, which Sandy developed a passion for while working under Henry Harris at Bouchon Racine. Clement’s French background has also left a mark on the menu.

Sandy oversees the kitchen, while Clement manages the front of house.

Bavette belongs to a new generation of independent venues that have helped put Leeds on the culinary map. The restaurant has been recognised in the Michelin Guide with a Bib Gourmand and ranked among the UK’s top 100 eateries at the National Restaurant Awards.

The attention brought a wave of new customers, but Sandy admits that not all of them were necessarily Bavette’s target audience.

“We had lots of new customers, which was really great. But some of them were coming because we’d won an award, not because it was the restaurant for them,” he explained.

“So that was a bit hard to deal with, but it’s much easier dealing with that than dealing with an empty restaurant.”

“You’ve just got to back yourself and stay true to your values and the restaurant that you want it to be, and thankfully we’ve stayed really busy.

“And I think there’s nothing better than people coming with high expectations and telling us that we met them, which is really lovely.”

Earlier this summer, Sandy teamed up with Tom Pullan, founder of The Empire Cafe and Highland Laddie, to form the Leeds Hospitality Collective: an initiative designed to bring together the city’s independent restaurant, pub and bar owners.

It comes as the hospitality industry continues to face mounting pressures.

“Staffing costs are really high, and costs associated with staff are really big,” he said.

“Everything’s getting more expensive, so your operating costs are higher, and rent costs are up. All those margins are down to the point where you’re lucky if it’s a positive rather than a negative.”

“Alongside that, people have less money to go out,” he added. “I think there’s a bit of a mistake sometimes to say to people, ‘Oh, you need to be going out and supporting the restaurants.’ People aren’t not going out because they don’t want to – they can’t.”

But Sandy is an optimist.

“I think there’s a need and a requirement for business owners to also talk about the positive side of the industry and how much it can give to people and how much you get from it as a career,” he said.

That optimism also applies to Leeds’ wider food scene – and its bright future.

“Leeds is full of really exciting, driven, passionate, independent hospitality owners and people who work in the industry who give everything to try and make that happen, and who are trying to push a massive boulder up a hill at the moment. It is difficult, but still an amazing industry to be part of,” he said.

Back at Bavette, Sandy and his team are preparing for another day of service. Asked which dish he is most proud of, he points to one that best represents the restaurant’s culinary philosophy.

“The soupe de poisson,” he said after some deliberation. “It comes from Marseille. It is a dish rooted in culture. It was started by the fishermen of Marseille, who would cook this dish for each other on the beach after selling their daily catch. It’s turned into a real bistro classic dish.

“A lot of people say it’s the best one they’ve had, and I think it says a lot about who we are, the food we cook in really traditional regional French food and its roots, and doing a really great example… a dish that a lot of people know and love, and a dish that a lot of people don’t know and hopefully come to Bavette and fall in love with.”