SUN-DAPPLED dogs at our feet and a Double IPA that’s just as mellow. Holbeck Village outside has an almost Mediterranean feel; you can imagine the local creatives making their evening paseo through its ginnels of weathered brick to join us for a few small plates in the Northern Monk Refectory.

Gavin Jackson’s precise ‘uncluttered’ food makes a trek out to the Old Flax Store worth it for just the eating

We’re here to check out the changes linked to the arrival of a new Exec Chef. Previously the food and drink offering at Leeds’ finest brewery tap has always been more pop-up from the early days when Grub & Grog worked some small vegan miracles. 

Reassuring to see that Archie, the brewery dog, is in situ, quite aloof to the tail-wagging overtures of our gourmet chihuahua, and the place is equally family-friendly. The city's Friday night supping frenzy seems more than a river crossing away.

Northern Monk and Archie owner Russell Bissett has promised that we’ll find new chef Gavin Jackson’s food direct and ‘uncluttered’ – like the first floor dining room, where it’s hard to see any major rearrangement of its rustic accountrements – spruces, hop bottles, eating tools in paper bags.

 

Northern Monk
 
.Beetroot, toasted nut and fluffy quinoa salad

 

If ‘uncluttered’ sounds on the spartan side, it’s the manta of many a contemporary food operation, where smoking, pickling, foraging, utilising herbs and flowers is to the fore. In Leeds the Ox Club and Mr Nobody pursue this small plate path well, but they don’t have the big advantage of The Refectory – Northern Monk’s array of innovative craft beers.

Which brings us to that 8.7 per cent 822 Double IPA. I shouldn’t have gone for a pint of the stuff. The board listing ABVs and prices just quotes for halves (£4.20) and thirds (£2.80) – a way of hinting ‘liquid dynamite' and certainly the train journey home passed in a pleasant bleariness.

The Double IPA’s name refers to 822AD when St Adelard, Benedictine Abbot of royal lineage, made the first record of (wild) hops being used in the brewing process. The current secular Monks’ homage is packed with the cultivated varieties – Simcoe, Mosaic, Amarillo and Centennial – giving it a heady, hoppy nose and a thick, resinous mouthfeel. What a wonderful match it was to the stand-out dish, a prettily textured beetroot, toasted nut and fluffy quinoa salad (£9).

 

.Mackerel, fennel and cox’s apple salad
.Smoked mutton ham

 

That’s not to diss NM’s regular New World IPA (a modest 6.2 per cent, £4.90 a pint), whose citrus and bitterness worked well with a variety of fish dishes chef Jackson (who has cooked at 10 Downing Street and ther Devonshire Arms) sent out – cured salmon, avocado, rye crisps (£5, main image); mackerel, fennel and cox’s apple salad (£6) and a seabass, summer herbs and vegetable salad (£14), all delicate and fresh but not overwhelmed by the beer.

Smoked, mutton ham (£5) was a more obvious beer pairing, as was a tender onglet steak with broccoli and barley (£14). Neither was quite as ravishing, but the bar was set high.

A guest beer, Hickey the Rake American from the lauded new Northumberland brewery, Wylam was floral and lemony, a lovely contrast with a keen bitter aftertaste.

 

.Seabass, summer herbs and vegetable salad
 
.Raspberry and sorrel ice cream

 

We were tempted also by the Bombay Dazzler Indian Wheat Beer NM have created in collaboration with Bundobust, but settled for the Northern Star Coffee Porter (5.9 per cent and £2.50 a half) as a pudding beer. Perfect, as you’d imagine with a sticky chocolate ganache and even stickier treacle ice cream, maybe at odds with a subtler melange of rhubarb, vanilla, mascarpone (both puds £5). A final palate cleanser was a vivid raspberry and sorrel ice cream (£2.75) from Northern Bloc.

So Gavin Jackson’s precise ‘uncluttered’ food makes a trek out to the Old Flax Store worth it for just the eating – brunch, in particular, looks amazing – but as you pass the state-of-the-art stainless steel brewing vessels on the way up and savour the hop and malt aromas that pervade the 18th century building it’s hard to resist the lure of the ales. There’s no sin in falling for a Monk or two. We’re sure St Adelard would have approved.

Northern Monk Refectory, Old Flax Store, Marshall’s Mill, Holbeck, LS11 9YJ. Tel: 0113 243 0003.