Located inside the very trendy Radisson Blu hotel in Leeds, FireLake Grill House was previously somewhere we had never considered as a place to go out in town for an evening meal. To be honest, we had wrongly assumed that it would be a rather uninteresting ‘hotel’ restaurant, but how wrong we were.

With some rather impressive decor, a concise but well-thought through menu, and friendly service, FireLake Grill House welcomes weary travellers, families and those looking to go out for a few drinks after work. There were diners fitting into all of those categories when we visited, and it didn’t feel like anyone was out of place.

Having been greeted warmly and taken to our booth, we ordered our standard bottle of fizzy water and pondered what starters to go for.

Charlotte opted for one of her classic dishes, moule mariniere, and I chose a ‘modern’ dish of mac n’ cheese with scampi, otherwise known as a ‘hipster tin’.

The mussels tasted fresh, the sauce was satisfyingly rich and creamy, and the whole dish came together through the interesting twist of having lemon focaccia as the dipping bread.

My hipster tin was far, far nicer than it sounded. Clearly the idea here is to make a bit of a mockery or at least draw a smile about the current fad for lobster with mac n’ cheese, and this version with scampi managed to poke some fun and deliver on taste at the same time. I was particularly impressed by the fact that the gratinated scampi was not lost in the creaminess of the dish and that the texture difference was clear enough to be enjoyed. We were left impressed.

For our mains, we again split off between classic and modern. Charlotte opted for the ultimate grill house dish – fillet steak – while I ordered the bunless burger that I later found had been causing great consternation on TripAdvisor. Between us, we shared some Bradford onion bahjis, while our little girl got some steamed veg.

First off, let us deal with the burger as this has caused great debate online. In my opinion, the dish was very nearly a hit. While the burger itself was well seasoned and tasty, and I thought the foccacia base and onion bahji offered a nice twist, there was no need for the charred lettuce and the cheese choice didn’t seem quite right. Overall it was close but no cigar. The burger was complemented nicely by fries that were well cooked and a beautiful looking and powerfully flavoured mustard accompaniment.

In contrast to the ‘nearly but not quite’, the fillet steak was exceptional. Cooked to perfection (rare as requested) and a good size, the steak was well seasoned and came with fat chips that suited the meal and didn’t just seem like an afterthought. The only let-down if we want to stickle is that the peppercorn sauce was a touch thin. Despite this, the overall dish did the grill name proud and left Charlotte very impressed.

Our onion bhaji sides were delicious, with a wonderful mix of crunch and softness and were flavoured well enough so that they did not just taste of grease. As well as this, our little one was rather impressed with the steamed veg (but at only eight months old, we’re not sure she’s qualified to judge just yet!).

We were left very impressed by FireLake Grill House and have certainly learned our lesson not to pre-judge Radisson Blu hotel restaurants! If you want to try out the FireLake Grill House or find out more info you can do so here.

Disclaimer: We were provided with a complimentary meal in order to provide a review. All views are our own and we were under no obligation to provide a positive review.