Seasonal specials, fresh bakes, melted cheese, and more things you need to eat this month

Whether it's seasonal specials, must-trys from new restaurants, or fleeting street food, these are the five dishes you have to try this July.

Noisette Bakehouse Morning Cake.

North Star Coffee Shop & General Store

North Star’s first ever coffee shop has opened, and we love it (click here for our video tour of the place) - combining their roastery and tasting facility with somewhere to actually sit and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

They’ve enlisted the help of Noisette Bakehouse to take over kitchen duties, making sweet and savoury bakes fresh every morning, as well as bread for sandwiches, and some inventive salads that you genuinely won’t begrudge eating. There’s not really a “wrong” thing to order, but the must-try is their Morning Cake - a slightly-sweet sour cream batter cake flavoured with tonka bean - a creation they’re so proud of it’s actually trademarked, so this is the only place you’re able to try it.

Lamb Mussaman

MyThai at Northern Monk Refectory

Not content with having an empire already including two restaurants in Leeds (and despite their original Wade Lane plot which has recently more than doubled in size), MyThai have stepped into the hot seat in the kitchen at Northern Monk Refectory. The menu features a selection of dishes from their Wade Lane and York Place restaurants, as well as a few specials. Their lamb mussaman is up there with the best we’ve ever had - a thick, warm-spiced coconut curry, rich with bone marrow from the entire lamb shank cooked into it, with meat so tender it could be persuaded off the bone by a firm talking-to.

The stone-fruity flavour and creamy mouthfeel of Northern Monk Peaches & Cream saison makes it the perfect pairing for the curry, so hurry down there before it sells out.

Flatbreads

The Greedy Pig Kitchen

Ever since branching out into The Swine That Dines almost two years ago, more adventurous dishes have been making their way onto The Greedy Pig’s daytime menu - a merguez sausage here, some steak and eggs there - but this is the biggest shake-up yet.

They’ve rubbed sandwiches off the chalkboard menu in favour of flatbreads; handmade dough, baked fresh, then topped with bold flavours like goats cheese, fig, and harissa, and hay-baked lamb and summer squash. Your tuna crunch baguette doesn’t sound quite so appetising now, does it?

The dough is really good today! This is the Goat's cheese, fig, walnut & harissa flatbread.
A post shared by Jo & Stu (@thegreedypigkitchen) on

Queso Fundido

Chida Cantina

Rosie O’Brien felt that the food was a bit of a missed opportunity in her recent review of Belgrave Street’s tequila bar & Mexican cantina, but a couple of dishes stood out - Queso Fundido is “gloriously rich melty cheese that’s Gael García Bernal-smooth...Spiked with just enough deep smoked paprika that it dances on the back of your tongue” - and if that doesn’t sell it you, then the fact she openly admitted to finishing it off with her bare hands should...

Squid Ink Linguine

The Brunswick

Eating food that’s been dyed pure black will never not be fun. Sometimes it can be gimmicky (what is “activated charcoal” anyway?), but not in this case - the squid ink in this linguine gives a deep, briney flavour to the pasta which evokes seaside flavours without being fishy fishy. It also turns your lips a shade that'd make Norwegian black metal crooner Abbath green with envy, and as we all know, Scandi is very on-trend right now.

Chicken Livers

Malcolm Michaels at Kirkgate Market

Only £1.39 per lb? Bargain...