On a warm Friday night in May, whilst visiting Leeds we ate at Dakota. Not knowing Leeds, we booked this place on the strength of lots of positive online reviews.

The restaurant is located in the basement of a hotel, and is gloomily dark. I'm not a fan of massive strip lighting in restaurants, but I do think the lights could have been turned up a bit. We note that online photos do show the restaurant more lit up.

The service was efficient. However, the waitress we had serving us, should work on making guests feel less "patronised" when engaging in small talk, for example when commenting on a customer's wine choice, or when discussing the purpose of their visit to Leeds.

We started with what was a “complimentary bread with a tomato, goats cheese and mozzarella dipping sauce" — apparently this was the favourite dish of the waitress. It was tasty enough, but perhaps a little heavy on the over-reduced tomato purée flavour.

The food was fine, the cod with prawns on a finely chopped red pepper base was fine, and my companions lamb was well cooked. A single side of soy glazed tenderstem broccoli (rather than the "recommended" 2 or 3 sides) was more than sufficient for us.

Overall I wouldn't recommend Dakota or revisit if I was in Leeds again. There are plenty of other options, which, in hindsight would have been better.