Crowd of Favours

Lovely atmosphere, great staff and very tasty food. They have an old school game station with a SNES and megadrive for those nostalgic gamers. Poker nights and ping pong on Monday’s, cinema night on Tuesday and quiz night on Sundays. Quirky little surprises darted about the pub and not to mention the great selection of beers. Good music too, go visit!

Leeds Brewery Ales? Check! Great location within 4 cartwheels of my bus home? Check! Smart and clean with competent staff? Check!
So why the 3 stars? As Roland Barthe would say… although there is studium I just couldn’t find the punctum. Everything is fine but nothing pierced the veneer to make any sort of a personal impression on me. I like that it’s there but would I choose to go there again over neighbouring bars? No. Would I divert from an evening to go and soak up the atmosphere? Again, no.
There was nothing ‘wrong’ with Crowd of Favours, I just couldn’t get excited about it in the context of the many many fantastic bars and pubs in this part of the city, or indeed the city as a whole. Add in a very watery cheese fondue and a few too many $ 1000 Bolsheviks (you know the ones, head to toe in designer labels to create their own brand of ‘authentic’ Muzhik without any sense of irony at all), and I just felt… nothing.
But on the plus side, I didn’t feel anything negative either. Neutral person of the Neutral Planet strikes again!

Lots of good ales from leeds brewery and some halloween specials. vampire kiss etc and weiss beer as well. shneider weisse .mmm.food smells good as well. was a bit vineragy. hope it wasnt a memory of dennises chippy. ill be back tomorrow tho for a game of operation. .tuesday is movie night.

Ooo I like this place, yes I do.
The ambience and the different choices of style of pub available was just perfect. Personally, I’m more of a «snug» girl (as opposed to straight up bar and grungy cellar, which were the other options), so we settled into super comfy chairs and had a natter over a monkey GnT. Lovely.
It was kicking out time and I was a bit sozzled, so shall be back to properly test that chair out and their array of interesting gins.

I went to this place a couple of weeks ago for the first time. I love it! Good beer, great atmosphere and love the décor. Will definitely become a regular.

Nice new pub and good addition to the band of Leeds Brewery pubs already in the city. Lets hope it’s the first of many new ventures in this part of city and be part of the area’s regeneration. My only one problem with the pub is I wish they had spent the extra cash got some proper old fashioned etched glass windows rather just stick cheap looking transfers on the plain glass windows. Great pubs are all in the details!

On the site of one of the cities best loved fish & chip shops Leeds Brewery has opened its 6^th city cetre effort, and by golly it’s a far cry away from all that has come before it. The smart, clean yet pedestrian look & feel that is the signature of its other pubs is gone and instead the guys behind it have gone for what I can only describe as a younger, more bar-​like feel… I was there at the opening on Friday and my first thoughts were that it reminds me a little of a combination of Call Lane Social and Jakes Bar with a smattering of The Adelphi for good measure.
Unclad brickwork, wooden floors, period bookcases making up the bar… some might see it as grungy (in a bad way), I choose to see it as what it really is — a pub with personality that is striving to be different.
And this doesn’t end with the décor, the staff are a bunch of smiling happy young people who really add to the feel of the place; though it does appear that it may be the first bar job for a few of the guys and girls behind the bar, and I’m hoping that training and experience will square away some of the more crazy teething problems that were experienced on the opening nights (a large vodka and coke being delivered in a pint glass for example).
The drinks are what you would expect and match the other pubs from the Brewery, which is to say they have some really good Leeds Brewery ales supported by guest ales from around the country, finished off with a random selection of lagers, ciders and spirits to complete the offering.
Whilst I’ve not yet been in and tried the full food menu, if the finger food on the opening night was anything to go by then I’m expecting the usual high standard of freshly prepared grub to be coming out of the kitchen to delight the tastebuds. I’m assured that the fish & chip heritage of the site will not be followed through and that battered sausages will not be making an appearance on the menu.
The only real negative about the pub is the location, it’s about 3 minutes walk out of the city centre’s centre, and in an area that most I’ve talked to have described as ‘rough’… we, and more importantly Leeds Brewery, can only hope that The Crowd of Favours marks step one in having rid of this impression for the whole area — either way, the young trendy crowd that were propping up the bar on Saturday definitely seemed not to care too much about how it, as they danced to the DJs tunes until they were thrown out at closing!

Turned up at 10am yesterday for the launch brunch which had been advertised on Twitter. When we arrived, only the cleaners were there, who told us they weren’t opening until 12. Good job the Duck and Drake was open, next door.
We returned around 12:15pm. There was just us, and one other customer. I had a pint of Liverpool Organic Brewery, Kitty Wilkinson, which was very nice.
I didn’t find the pub itself very welcoming if I’m honest. The downstairs area is dark and dingy, and smelt a little damp. The urinals in the gents are a very poor design and I can imagine it being a little difficult not to pee on your own feet if you’re not careful. Whilst the upstairs is a lot nicer, the floor is uneven, and I’m sure that after a few pints, taking a tumble will not be an uncommon occurrence.
I think the lack of atmosphere was just down to the place being empty, so I’ll give it a few weeks for word to get around, and then a revisit is in order.