Merrie to moreish

As one-third of the Rhubarb Triangle, Wakefield has a longstanding association with food. Today, festivals, farm shops and a raft of new independent restaurants are contributing to its growing reputation, as Laura Reid finds out. Main pictures by James Hardisty.

Chris Hale makes a bold claim. “You can basically eat from anywhere in the world in Wakefield now,” says the local chef. He’s not wrong. It’s Saturday evening in the city centre and I’m spoilt for choice. I’m standing in the Bull Ring, which later this month will be at the heart of the city’s famed rhubarb festival, and the surrounding streets are lined with cafes and restaurants. They’re largely independents and many of them didn’t exist less than a decade ago. I opt for Turkish cuisine that night, but Thai, Japanese, Greek, Cuban, Abyssnian, Indian, Spanish, Italian, they’re all at my fingertips.

There’s a steady buzz about the place and I’m relieved that many of my home city’s eateries are filled with life after the knock that hospitality has suffered throughout the pandemic.

I’m not the only one to have noticed. “I think people are starting to think let’s get out there and make up for the past couple of years,” says Susan Ralph, executive assistant at Wakefield BID. “And that means putting some money back into the local hospitality economy.”

Susan has only been with the BID – which champions the city centre and its businesses – since April last year. Yet, she’s well versed on how the area is changing. “When units become vacant, a lot are being taken up by restaurants or cafes and coffee bars,” she says.

Unit space has not been in short supply, with the changing face of Britain’s high streets. A Turkish grill, for example, sits in the building that only six years ago housed Wakefield’s post office. “Recently there has been this growth of cafe culture and I think that’s been a kind of saving grace for dying high streets,” says Leeds Beckett University academic Dr Rachel Rich, the editor of the Food & History journal. “Even if people aren’t shopping so much face to face any more, people still want to convene in high streets and you can make profit from getting them there to eat and drink.”

It’s quite an accessible industry, Chris Hale tells me. Formerly the owner of an altitude training company, he transitioned into the food business after appearing on MasterChef in 2016 and now runs Yorkshire Event Catering, a firm focusing on pop-up restaurants, fine dining and catering for functions.

“People are passionate about food, and I think people see it as quite an easy industry to get into,” he says. “People do go into it without a great deal of specialist knowledge. And if you do things right, it doesn’t need to be cost-prohibitive.” Money, I’m told, is one reason why Wakefield has proved to be an attractive prospect for restaurateurs. The cost of renting a property, and of paying rates, makes it a much more affordable option than neighbouring Leeds.

The clientele is there too; as well as those that live in the city and the wider district, two central train stations means Wakefield is easy to get to from across much of Yorkshire, and further afield.

“Wakefield is developing and there’s a big community of people here,” says Linh Hoai Le

Thi, director of Tet restaurant, which opened