Opening a restaurant in the surreal setting of a casino isn't a gamble when you have James Martin at the stoveAlea Casino, Clarence Dock, Leeds (0113 341 3202). Meal for two, including wine and service, �100There's no point pretending. If it was possible to conduct a health and safety risk assessment on restaurants of the sort applied to building sites, to ascertain the likelihood of a happy dining experience, I doubt anybody with a modicum of taste would ever set foot in the Leeds Kitchen. A restaurant fronted by a TV chef? Who's best known as the housewives' favourite? And who hasn't been in a kitchen full time in years? In a trashy casino on the edge of Leeds? Step away from the table. Surround it with red tape now. Slap condemned stickers all over it. On paper it looks like the Leeds Kitchen would be to a good night out what the Ebola virus would be to a children's party.Poor James Martin ? though, if his long speeches about the size of his classic car collection are anything to go by, poor is the last thing he is. But still. The fact that he was once a very fine restaurant chef ? I ate his food at the first Hotel du Vin in Winchester, in the decade before last in the century before this one ? stands for nothing now. He's the guy in the jumpers with the cheeky grin, the one who legions of post-menopausal British women would like to take home for a bit of hot chilli prawn-on-pilaf action. And that's the irony. The job he does around food (and, in my humble opinion, does well, on Saturday Kitchen) is the one reason you'd expect a restaurant he is involved with to be complete pants. TV is a casual, throwaway job. Restaurants demand seriousness.And so to the revelation. The food at the Leeds Kitchen is good. It's robust, well thought out and well executed. The location is weird. The Alea Casino is a hard-edged, shiny-floored echoey space, which feels like a train station without the platforms. In the ground-floor restaurant music booms. There are blow-ups of vintage French caf� posters of the sort you'd find in a Caf� Rouge, and a floor-to-ceiling photo of Mr Martin in chef's whites, which isn't a huge aid to the digestion. No one would call it calming.But there is some of that about the food, which is the sort of stuff anybody who has watched too much Saturday Kitchen would recognise: modern, big on flavour, uncontrived, comforting. There were soft pickled herrings, cured in-house, with a salad of beets and turnips and soda bread croutons. There was a scotch egg made from smoked haddock on a sparky mess of creamed and acidulated leeks. There was a duck dish, the breast roasted, the leg braised, and a butch take on boeuf bourguignon.What defined these dishes was not the work done on service, but everything done before: the balance of that cure on the herring, the forming of the scotch egg and the leeks beneath it. Best of all was that braised duck, spun through with orange zest then formed into a cigar and wrapped in crisped filo. We finished with a caramelised orange tart, and a white chocolate and whisky croissant bread-and-butter pudding. This is James Martin's signature dessert. Frankly, I don't want the man signing anything of mine, but his take on bread-and-butter pudding is good, in a bad way. Or bad, in a good way.Pricing for all this is steep by Leeds standards. Think �7 for starters and mid teens for mains. This is not helped by a wine list which accelerates from �14.50 upwards as quickly as one of the man's shiny, over-powered cars. Then again the restaurant is in a casino and perhaps this is the way for the house to get back a little of what they have lost to the successful gamblers.We slipped upstairs to play a bit of blackjack after dinner, surrounded by a curious clientele, some of whom were paddling at the bottom of the gene pool, bless 'em. My advice is to avoid the slots. Boycott the roulette wheels. Head instead for the restaurant. To my surprise it turns out to be the one part of the casino which isn't a gamble.Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one placeFood & drinkLeedsRestaurantsRestaurantsJay Raynerguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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