Galleria Leeds: Meet the head chef behind the Leeds restaurant loved by food critic Grace Dent
The chef behind one of the city’s newest restaurants has had a memorable start to his latest venture.
Wood-fired kitchen and bar Galleria opened in Project House, Armley Road, in December 2023.
Last month, the restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, was visited by top restaurant critic Grace Dent.
Writing for the Guardian, Dent was blown away by the restaurant. Things have been non-stop for Galleria ever since, with customers bursting through the door to try dishes the critic loved.
The mastermind behind the food is 34-year-old chef Andy Castle.
Speaking to the Yorkshire Evening Post, Andy said his cooking journey has been a little unconventional.
Andy said: “I thought I was quite late into it. I remember Googling ‘is 24 too old to become a chef?’
“All these chefs that you admire, there’s always this romantic story of how they were working at their family restaurant at 14.
“I was like, ‘oh God. I’m going to be going into this with people who know far, far, far more than me at my age’.
“But I’ve always had a big interest in food. I started cooking with my mum loads.”
At this time, Andy had another passion - music. It became an obsession, he said, and he longed to find something that could compare.
Andy said: “I was in bands. I liked how, as a career, music blurs the lines between work and play. You do what you love all the time.
“I’ve always been really obsessed with what I do. When I was doing music I was obsessed with it. And I needed something else that I could dive into with the same level of interest.”
He jokingly added: “If I studied biology, I’d go home and try to learn how to give myself wings at night or gills or something.”
Once his mind was set on becoming a chef, Andy jumped straight in - joining a barbeque restaurant in Bradford as a kitchen porter.
As a newcomer, his time there taught him much. Andy picked up a range of skills as he made his way up the ranks to earn a chef title.
His next post was at Belgrave Music Hall, in Leeds city centre, which he said was “an exciting place to be” filled with many big opportunities.
Andy said: “I never went to culinary school but that obsession took over and I spent every day off with a cookbook in a coffee shop somewhere.
“I had not outgrown [Belgrave Music Hall], but I eventually got to a point where I wanted to explore more avenues.“
“I was there for six years. That’s a really long time at one restaurant but I did progress through the ranks.
“It’s where I got my first head chef job. It was a lot of umming and ahing initially. ‘Am I ready to do this?’ It was a learning curve, but it was amazing.”
Stints at a few more restaurants followed before Andy was called in to shape the kitchen at Galleria.
“It’s interesting,” Andy said.
“With it being not just a restaurant, it is tied to Project House, it feels like everyday there is something that I have never seen before. And that’s because of the diversity of the events.
“One day, yogis piled into the venue to do yoga, then it was filled with bouncy castles, bubble machines, and sensory things for kids, and then the band showed up later to do the sold-out show.
“Over the course of a day, all this insane stuff is happening. It’s cool to see and it’s never boring, there’s always something new.”
In her review, Dent said: “Galleria’s menus from breakfast through to dinner cherrypick lovely, snacky things from around the world – from France, Greece, the USA, Asia, north Africa – but what unites them is Castle’s thoughtful, complex, fresh approach.”
During her visit, she tried everything from charred flatbread, which she described as “truly intoxicating,” to a key lime pie - and loved it all.
Speaking on the glowing review, which came as a huge surprise to the team, Andy said it wasn’t his intention to build a broad menu.
He explained: “I will take influence and flavours from dishes [around the world].
“That is quite a staple of how I cook and write menus and dishes. You can find something like peppercorn sauce and you do little tweaks and pull it in little directions. It will still be peppercorn sauce but I have added freshly ground sichuan pepper at the end just to give it a little dimension.
“It’s not a spin on peppercorn sauce, I’m just looking at it through a different lens.”
Customers can expect a new menu at Galleria launching soon, which will include steak and grilled fish, while the team brainstorms what a Sunday offering at the restaurant could look like, too.