Sheffield foodie guide: where locals eat and drink
Try elephant’s foot buns, feather-light puri, cocktails made from just-picked nuts, bottles of local beer, Scandi-meets-Japanese cuisine, and handmade donuts in the Steel City
Looking for Sheffield restaurants? Check out our ideas for eating and drinking in the Steel City, from West Bar to Endcliffe Park and beyond…
For more exciting restaurants and weekend ideas for food lovers, check out our best UK city breaks.
Best restaurants in Sheffield…
Napoli Centro – for Neapolitan pizza
In this 16-seater, Riccardo Castagno is keen to create the vibe of those small, buzzy neighbourhood pizzerias that proliferate in Naples. Students and academics from the nearby university, like Sheffield foodies, love Riccardo’s light and elastic, 48-hour-proved pizza bases, quickly cooked at 450C and topped with sweet, crushed San Marzano tomatoes, Amalfi anchovies or imported cured meats. Toppings range from seasonal specials such as Zucca: fior di latte mozzarella, ’nduja and gorgonzola dolce on a butternut squash base; to its knock-out Salsiccia pizza, with fennel sausage, chilli, smoked provola cheese and friarielli, the leafy, broccoli-related green.
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Jöro – for scandi-Japanese fusion
Housed inside four upcycled shipping containers, Sheffield restaurant Jöro specialises in what head chef and co-owner Luke French calls “new Nordic” cuisine, inspired by the Scandi approach to locality, care of ingredients and a simplicity of cooking. But there’s also a nod to Japanese cooking techniques. “In a nutshell, we call it a ‘Scandi-Jap mash-up’,” says Luke, whose signature dishes include asparagus, pickled spruce and blackcurrant leaves, and brown butter ice cream, aerated white chocolate and miso. And it’s not just lucky locals who appreciate Luke’s food – Jöro entered the Good Food Guide after only a few months of business, its inspectors praising the “no-holds-barred seasonal cooking”.
Ashoka – for curry
This beloved Sheffield institution on bustling Ecclesall Road opened in 1967, and is one of the best places to go for a curry. Rahul Amin took over in 2004, and has crafted a restaurant that expertly blends the traditional and contemporary (inside it’s all black and white floor tiling, and elegant wooden dining booths). Start with crispy poppadoms piled high with chopped onions, cucumber, coriander and chaat masala, plus a ‘1960s pickle tray’ of punchy dips, before moving onto toweringly puffy, light-as-air puri filled with the likes of spiced chicken liver, or cubes of potato tossed with Henderson’s Relish.
For mains, traditional dishes are well represented on the busy menu, but it’s worth seeking out the restaurant’s quirkier dishes: fiery and rich Reyt Spiceh Curreh (a tribute to the super-hot dishes traditionally consumed by inebriated late-night customers), and Taxi Driver Curry (smoky chicken tikka with garlic minced lamb). Cool down with a citrussy Bradfield Farmer’s blonde beer – brewed in Sheffield.
Butcher & Catch – for local produce
The clue’s in the name at this brightly decorated restaurant in Broomhill, which has a menu that revolves around showcasing prime, sustainably sourced meat and fish (the former reared in Sheffield and the surrounding area, the latter sourced from day boats on the British coast). Start with a few Pyefleet Pure oysters – served au naturel, panko breaded or topped with local Little Mester cheese and poached pear – before moving onto the likes of confit Moss Valley pork belly with seared scallops, parsnip crisps and purée, or catch of the day (try spankingly fresh mackerel) served with a mound of buttery greens. Those with heftier appetites should attempt sharing platters such as Block & Tackle: buttermilk chicken wings, oxtail yorkies, seared bavette steak, fried cod cheeks, glazed pork belly, deep-fried oysters, crispy whitebait, grilled sardines and slaw.
Best bars and places to drink in Sheffield…
The Fat Cat – for Sheffield-brewed beers
The Fat Cat, a charming traditional watering hole in the city’s old industrial heartland, is the place to go for a pint from one of Sheffield's most iconic breweries. Kelham Island Brewery crafted their first beer in the pub’s garden in 1990, and although the brewery is now a few yards away in Alma Street, The Fat Cat still offers Kelham Island stalwarts, alongside an array of guest beers. Order a pint of their award-winning fruity Pale Rider ale, soak in the cosy vibes and chat to the friendly punters.
Public – for cocktails
The Steel City has a growing number of first-rate cocktail bars, and one of the best is Public, adjacent to Sheffield Town Hall and squeezed into what was once a public toilet. The team behind fellow Sheffield bars such as the award-winning Picture House Social and Great Gatsby has done an amazing job of turning the tiny space into a sleek cocktail bar, with a jewel-toned mid-century aesthetic and intimate, café-style booths.
It is the use of local ingredients – picked from hedgerows, moors or scrubland – which impresses at Public. They shine through in the Queen of Jalisco, where a house-made hazelnut syrup and a chicory root tincture (a liquid extract) meet with lovage-infused tequila for a lighter cocktail served over ice. The same can be said of the Hedgerow Negroni, which adds blackberries infused with Tanqueray 10 gin to a mushroom tincture, crème de mure, Benedictine and Genepi for a sweeter, more subtle range of flavours.
Turner's Craft Beer Bottle Shop – for craft beer and Yorkshire gins
Looking for an eco-friendly way to buy beer? Then pay a visit to this Abbeydale Road bottle shop. As well as an extensive selection of bottled brews, they also have four kegs available – the idea is to fill up your own growler bottle from them. Expect to find nationwide beers (in bottle form and on tap), from Cornish Verdant and Tottenham’s Pressure Drop to northern breweries including Cloudwater and Thornbridge.
If you’re not a beer fan then there’s still plenty to explore. There’s a wine list curated by Sheffield wine merchant Olive & Vine Wines, and a robust collection of Yorkshire gins – we spotted Sheffield Dry Gin, Masons and Brockmans on our visit.
Best cafés and bakeries in Sheffield…
Birdhouse Tea Bar and Kitchen – for tea
Spread over two floors in a former cutlery-machine factory, this calm, laidback café is all high ceilings, exposed brick walls and dried flowers hanging from beams. Award-winning, ethically sourced tea is the star of the show, with a lengthy menu to choose from (including house blends crafted in Birdhouse's Nether Edge tea studio). We loved the smoky, complex Kelham Island, made with darjeeling, lapsang souchong, apple and safflower petals; it came in a dinky teapot with minimalist glass cups and a timer for optimum brewing.
Elsewhere on the menu there's coffee from Sheffield-based Foundry Roasters; tea cocktails; and hearty dishes including luscious pancakes with coconut blossom syrup, blueberry compote and whipped coconut cream. Or for something savoury, try the Sheffield rarebit: toasted sourdough with grilled cheese, mustard, Yorkshire ale and Henderson’s Relish – make sure you add a side of earl grey-glazed ham.
Depot Bakery - for brunches, pastries and sourdough
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Depot has been pivotal in raising the Steel City’s baking game. Based in post-industrial Kelham Island, now an up-and-coming food and creative hub, Depot’s bakery and canteen serves banging brunches (for example, french toast, eggs florentine, salt beef and swiss bagels) alongside A1 breads and pastries. Depot’s classic sourdough recipe is unchanged in a decade – why mess with perfection? Elsewhere, its range takes in everything from focaccias to frangipane-filled almond croissants and its much-loved honeycomb-dipped vegan chocolate cake. Depot has a second Hillsborough Park café. thedepotbakery.co.uk
Hero bakes: sourdough; New York deli rye sourdough; croissant; cinnamon brioche knot; chocolate honeycomb cake.
Eve’s Kitchen – for donuts
Enter Lauren Eve’s chilled out café on indie-style Sharrow Vale Road to discover a counter lined with serried ranks of handmade donuts. They’re all proudly plump and dusted with sugar, and fillings include dark chocolate and honeycomb, milk chocolate hazelnut crunch, apple crumble, and rhubarb and custard. There are also decadent French toast dishes available – just in case you haven’t quite got your sugar fix.
Forge Bakehouse – for artisan bakes
Martha Brown started The Forge Bakehouse in 2012 following a year studying at Nottinghamshire’s School of Artisan Food. It’s become a community hub and in the past five years, Martha’s tiny shop has grown into larger premises where you can buy a large range of sourdough, long-fermented bread and pastries. What's on offer changes regularly – the loaves, ciabatta, baguettes and batards can cover anything from dark and dense Nordic-style bakes to creamy white sourdough, with an imaginative approach to flavour (raisin and rosemary, apple and oat, rye and caraway and beetroot and cumin).
Patisserie is equally tempting: highlights include morning buns and chocolate tarts. They also have a light-filled space upstairs where you can sip brews from North Star Coffee, and enjoy dishes such as harissa-fried eggs in sourdough with avocado, labneh and hazelnut dukkah; or homemade banana bread granola with yogurt, cherry compote, poached pears and toasted pumpkin seeds. Martha also runs regular bread-making classes that range from an introduction to bread-making to mastering the intricacies of sourdough and French loaves.
Best food market in Sheffield…
Moor Market
Tall, sculpted and glass-fronted, the acclaimed Moor Market houses some 90 independent traders. Butchers and fishmongers are especially well represented, with 10 of the former and four of the latter, as well as bakers, specialist grocers, artisan delis and more. Its gastronomic offerings are impressively diverse, including enormous, cream-filled elephant’s foot buns (a local delicacy) at Turner’s bakery; pretty crêpe cakes from Mr Gao’s Hand Made Baking; Nepalese thali at Hungry Buddha; traditional pork pies at Waterall Brothers (they even offer a wedding cake version); and Chinese wontons and steamed buns at Sichuan Steamed Food.
Where to stay in Sheffield
Brocco on the Park
Positioned on the edge of leafy Endcliffe Park, with easy access to Ecclesall and Sharrow Vale, this imposing red-brick Edwardian villa is a cool, calm, Scandi-esque boutique hotel decorated in a palette of soothing neutrals. Rooms are named after different birds (from Owl’s Burrow to Robin’s Hollow), and as well as invitingly capacious beds and luxuriously outfitted bathrooms (The Dovecote has a beautiful freestanding copper bath), part-Finnish owner Tiina Carr has added plenty of smaller but equally important hygge-like indulgences. These include sumptuous bed linens, Bronte lambswool blankets, fluffy white robes, organic toiletries and homemade cakes.
Head downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant, Brocco Kitchen, for breakfasts such as smoked trout with potato and onion rosti, spinach, poached eggs and hollandaise; blueberry and lemon porridge with chia seeds; and spinach, mango and kale smoothie. Plus there are seasonal bellinis on offer, spiked with elderflower or violet liqueur. They also offer afternoon tea, and smorgasbords-style small plates for lunch and dinner.
Click here to book your stay at Brocco on the Park
For more information, visit welcometosheffield.co.uk
Words by Hannah Guinness, Joel Harrison and Mark Taylor
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