Is the best restaurant in Sheffield run by students?

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So, onto today’s piece. One of The Tribune’s missions is to bring back old-school journalism. In the past, great local papers like the Sheffield Star and Telegraph  had an army of reporters and feature writers specialising in everything from theatre and music to food and motoring. We haven't yet grown enough to have a team of specialist critics, but we do occasionally rope in The Star’s former food critic Martin Dawes to help us review a local restaurant.

For 26 years, Dawes ate his way methodically through the restaurants of Sheffield, reviewing around 1,400 meals and only closing down one (he claims that it was already on the way out). 18 months ago he joined me for a meal at Norse, a Nordic-Asian restaurant which offered a 14-course tasting menu. Last week, he joined me at Sheffield College’s award-winning The Silver Plate, a student-run restaurant which some think is the best in the city.

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💰 You may remember our two pieces from earlier this year about the Hagues, a wealthy but fractious Sheffield family who made their money in waste. Well, we have news. To recap: a disagreement over whether the subsidiary company, Hague Plant Excavations, was owned by all three Hague siblings (David, Dianne and Martin) or just one (Martin), led to a huge family fallout and six rounds of litigation lasting almost a decade. This row was finally settled, with the judge siding with Martin Hague, despite the fact that the youngest Hague sibling had admitted to lying, false accounting, and grossly exceeding legal waste limits at his various tips.

At the end of our second piece we revealed that the two warring sides of the family were finally going to break with each other after almost two decades of arguing. Well, last month it finally happened. Martin Hague of MHH Contracting no longer has any stake in Hague Plant, and the family’s first and oldest business is now the sole preserve of his siblings David and Dianne, and David’s son William. The news is the final chapter (we think) in a family saga that has torn one of the richest families in Sheffield apart.

👑 A few months ago we revealed the surprising news that Forgemasters appeared in the Epstein Files, the trove of information about the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Well, now the Yorkshire Post has revealed why. The historic firm appears in the files because Prince Andrew made an offer to the government to broker a deal between Forgemasters and Epstein, after a £80m government loan for the company fell through in 2010. However, crucially, it doesn’t appear that Forgemasters management knew anything about this, and that the then Prince was freelancing with his friend Epstein’s money, two years after the American was imprisoned for sex trafficking.

✈️ Will the “flying bum” ever take off? The Times reports that Airlander, the company developing the — ahem — distinctively shaped airships, is in trouble. Airlander is planning to construct the vehicles in Doncaster, and has been loaned at least £1m from the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority to build the factory. But now its auditors are warning there is “material uncertainty” over whether the company is a going concern, after struggling to receive the funding it needs.

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Is the best restaurant in Sheffield run by students?

By Dan Hayes

“Is it Sheffield?” asks Martin Dawes as we take our seats in The Silver Plate. The Star’s legendary restaurant critic is referring, of course, to the cutlery, which on closer inspection just has a bland brand name, and not the “Made in Sheffield” imprimatur of quality Dawes believes it should have. Still, it could have been worse. Once, when dining at the Leopold Hotel, he looked at his knife and got a terrible shock. “It was German!” he exclaims.

Martin is my dining companion for another of The Tribune’s (very) occasional food reviews. He retired as Star’s restaurant critic in 2010, but has kept his hand in on his personal blog Another Helping ever since — given this, he has over 40 years of experience and nobody knows Sheffield’s food scene like he does. I drew on that expertise in late 2024, when he accompanied me to Norse, a Nordic-Asian restaurant in Neepsend to try their 14-course tasting menu. Longer-term readers may remember that Norse wasn’t exactly to Martin’s taste. He’s not a fan of “lazy” tasting menus, and described one course as “like something from an Anglo-Saxon dig”. He also bemoaned the loud music, low light and lack of napkins. “I know I’m going to come across as a curmudgeon,” he said, accurately.

The Silver Plate is a very different dining experience. Situated in Sheffield College's City Campus, it's run by the students on the catering and hospitality programme, an award-winning course on which students learn about every aspect of the restaurant trade, from cooking to front of house. The restaurant opened in 2010, when Sheffield College’s new City Campus building opened on Granville Road. While not unique — several other FE colleges across the country have training restaurants that are open to the public — it is considered to be one of the best. “It’s always been one of the top three in the country,” says Martin.

While students here do learn about modern food trends like tasting menus, the food they serve in The Silver Plate skews noticeably more traditional than places like Norse and JÖRO. Perusing the four-course menu full of classic French dishes like vol-au-vents and parfaits, Martin looks relieved.