Welcome back HOME

Leeds’ most prestigious restaurant is planning to open with a new menu, new ethos and a new approach to relaxed informal dining.  

HOME have announced plans to reopen on July 31st with online bookings being taken on their website. The restaurant was created by chefs Mark Owens and Elizabeth Cottam (Liz) in 2017 and has been one of Leeds’ most successful independent restaurants.

New beginnings

The new menu, launching July 31st, will be the first menu created solely by Liz. It comes as Mark and Liz split their talents across both sites; Liz leading HOME and Mark leading The Owl. Gone are the days of monthly menus, the new HOME menu will be the most experimental to date, with spontaneously selected dishes that allow for changes to happen weekly. The changes offer purity of flavour whilst using modern cooking techniques. Pictured is the English Garden Salad, Stone Bass and Oyster plus the Foie Gras Chocolate Pebbles.

Safety First 

HOME is in a fortunate position of having a lot of space which means there is little needed to follow social distancing guidelines. However, service times will be adapted to reduce the amount of people in the building at one time, with earlier time slots and a couple of later time slots added.

They have also restructured the experience to reduce the number of staff required to serve each table and are in the process of creating some clever and beautiful solutions to clean tables and deliver cutlery. These changes will ensure the customer experience is safe but still fluid, and in keeping with HOME’s particular dining style.

HOME and The Owl

2020 was planned to be the biggest year for Liz Cottam’s flagship restaurant HOME and the newly opened gastro pub and dining room in Kirkgate Market, The Owl. Overseen by business partner Mark Owens, The Owl has made a significant impact on the UK food scene in the short time it has been open, and plans were in motion to open the space above it and launch an experimental Oyster Loft just before lockdown hit. These plans will be revisited as soon as they are able to.

Liz’s focus has always been on evolving HOME, which is due to celebrate its 3rd birthday in August. When the pair decided to divide their time between the two restaurants, she set to work carving out a new identity for the food. Lockdown allowed for plans to be finalised and refined and the restaurant will reopen with a menu of brand new dishes. 

Meanwhile, Mark has been busy at The Owl, launching a finish at home offering, with three different 4 course set menus available to pre-order, which can be delivered or collected. Each menu has sold out since the launch and with demand increasing week by week it is likely the finish at home offering may continue beyond lockdown. The Owl are also set to launch a new range of merchandise featuring The Owl’s mascot, Eric.

Liz Cottam, HOME Chef Patron, says: 

“I ended last year promising myself that 2020 was going to be a great year, our year at HOME and we really did get off to the best start. All of our hard work from the previous two years seemed to be paying off and things were really clicking. You can imagine how much it knocked the wind out of our sails when Covid landed and closed us down and how terrified I was by the possibility of not just this year, but all of our future HOME years not  happening? Once I took a deep breath and got a hold of myself, I started to work on plans for using lockdown strategically, to get better and come back so much stronger than if we had stayed open. I locked myself in the kitchen and started to work on finishing some dishes we had in production and on many more news ones. The team and I have a shared vision for our food and have been working so closely over the last year together that picking up the baton alone was very strange. Thank god for Zoom and messaging, but I can’t wait for us to be back in our kitchen together again.

I have also had a collection of Zoom meetings and calls about new sites, new projects and how to get them funded. One in particular has progressed very quickly and we’ll know over the next couple of weeks if this is likely to happen this year! It’s a big one and I’m doing everything I can to make it happen”

Bookings can be made on the HOME website – https://www.homeleeds.co.uk/