Project House, which arrived in Armley Road in July, has welcomed an on-site eatery - Galleria.
We speak to Simon Stevens to find out more.
We speak to Simon Stevens to find out more.
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00:00 We are here today to talk about the opening of Galleria, which is the cafe to Project House.
00:05 Project House, the event space, opened in July 2023.
00:09 It was always the intention that we were going to open a cafe, bar, restaurant that sat alongside the event space.
00:17 It's just taken us six months to get round to actually getting the thing open due to a number of reasons, but we're finally here.
00:24 So tell me about the restaurant then, what can we expect?
00:27 A little bit of everything really. When we were coming up with the concept of the restaurant, it was a bit of a difficult one to crack.
00:34 We were conscious of the fact that we are an event space, a gig venue, so we were going to have quite a lot of passing trade from people attending the events and the shows that are down here.
00:43 So the food needed to be accessible enough for a bit of casual passing trade.
00:48 We needed it to be amazing enough to attract people to Armley, not just Armley, and you just couldn't say it on the outskirts of Armley.
00:57 To draw people out of town, the food's going to have to be high enough quality to be that destination dining spot,
01:04 but also at a price point that is not affecting that kind of passing trade I was talking about earlier.
01:11 So we've brought together an amazing team, chefs we've worked with before, Codder and Andy from Box Club and Man Behind the Curtain.
01:19 We've come up with an amazing menu, we've ticked all those boxes.
01:23 Incredible evening menu, wood-fired chicken, flatbreads, some really amazing stuff on there, and an incredible daytime menu as well.
01:31 So a pop of the classic brunch items and some new, really amazing sounding stuff. Can't wait to taste it.
01:38 Right, so how many different menus do you have? You mentioned brunch and dinner.
01:42 Yes, so we've got a brunch menu that runs 9am to 3pm, so that's kind of a lunch brunch.
01:50 We've got some nice neighbours over at Castleton Mills, who we're hoping to attract for coffees and daytime workdays and meetings and that sort of thing.
01:59 So some of the usual brunch over here, and then an evening menu that runs from 5pm to 9pm Thursdays around 7pm.
02:07 So what kind of guests are you trying to attract? You mentioned, as I say, industrial estate outside of Armelie.
02:14 Who are you hoping to see here on a regular basis?
02:18 Well, like adventurous people probably.
02:21 Like I say, we've kind of set the restaurant up to double up the workspace during the day, so to go along the brunch and coffee menus that we've got.
02:31 So it's basically interviews, dropping in if you're working on laptops and that sort of thing. That's our midweek target audience for daytimes.
02:38 Once you get through to the weekends, I have waited ages for all the right reasons to get a table at Northstar.
02:46 So there's definitely a kind of market for that weekend brunch crowd as well.
02:50 We've got parkour-type customers, which we weren't able to do at any of our places in town.
02:56 So we're hoping that travelling people coming in from brunch, families and that sort of thing will be quite a good weekend.
03:02 We're launched. There's a lot of work to do to get it operating as we want to see it.
03:07 And prepared. We've got a bit of... Galleria's going to be busy through January, we hope.
03:12 The event space kind of kicks in a little bit later in the year, just because of the nature of the touring calendar.
03:17 So get a little bit of time now that Galleria is busy. The venue event space can take stock and get ready for the rest of the spring.