Whether you’re visiting Sheffield for the weekend or you’re a proud resident, the Kelham Island Food Tour is a must do, especially if you’re a foodie. If you have a couple of hours spare in the city and want to support small indie bars and restaurants, then this tour is for you.
Where is Kelham Island?
Located on a man-made island in the north of the city, Kelham Island is one of the eleven quarters that make up Sheffield City Centre. Once the heart of the revolutionary steel making process which forged the future of the city, today, Kelham Island is a buzzing urban district, home to a range of trendy eateries, pubs, a brewery and modern apartments. The man-made island was built to help power local workshops using water wheels. In 2022, it was named as one of the ‘Coolest Neighbourhoods in the World’ to visit by Time Out.
If you’re visiting from Sheffield City Centre, then it’s just a 25 minute walk. I found that Ubers are really cheap and reliable in Sheffield. It only took 8 minutes from near the train station and cost me £5.90 on a Saturday afternoon.
Kelham Island Food Tours
Kelham Island Food Tours is ran by Sophie who was born and bred in Sheffield. After moving away and living in London and Brighton for twenty years, Sophie has returned to her hometown and now works hard to showcase the best food and drink in the area. Scheduled tours run every Saturday and last around 3.5 hours. Each tour can take a minimum of 6 people and costs £60 per person.
What can you expect from a Kelham Island Food Tour?
Our tour started at 11am on a windy Saturday morning in front of the Bessemer Converter at Kelham Island Museum. Our tour guide, Sophie explained that we would be visiting and sampling food and drinks from six different venues around Kelham Island. Each stop would be an independent business and there were a number of different cuisines included.
Is there a lot of walking involved?
Although the tour lasted between 3.5 and 4 hours, there wasn’t a lot of walking involved. As I mentioned, there were six different businesses we sampled on the tour. Two of them were at one stop and the next was very close by. We stopped at each venue for around 30 minutes, which allows plenty of time to rest and enjoy the food and drink. The walk wasn’t particularly difficult and the paths we walked were mostly wheelchair accessible. However, if you’re worried then this is something that you can talk to Sophie about before you book your tour. Overall, I walked for about a mile and a half with the stops in between.
Which stops are included on the food tour?
There are so many different independent businesses in Sheffield, particularly in Kelham Island. The idea of the food tour is to showcase these businesses and offer you a taste of independent Sheffield. Sophie offers a number of different tours, the one that we took part in was the Taste of Kelham Tour. On this tour we stopped at:
Millowners Arms
The Millowners Arms is part of the Kelham Island museum and was once a derelict storeroom. It was created as a museum piece in 2013 and used for special events. However, it opened as a pub in 2019. The decor reflects a traditional Sheffield pub and has little pieces of history dotted around. Here we had a homemade onion bhaji and an ale chosen to complement the flavours in the bhaji.
Chop Shop Bar & Grill
Chop Shop Bar & Grill mainly caters to meat eaters, although there are vegetarian and vegan options. They pride themselves on only using the very best local meat from Sheffield and the surrounding areas. It’s in a wonderful location close to the Kelham Island museum. It’s the ideal venue for a post-museum lunch or drink. Here, we were treated to sticky pork belly with a Hendersons Relish glaze. I wouldn’t usually go for pork belly, so it was great to try something different. I thoroughly enjoyed it would definitely choose it if I was to visit Chop Shop again!
Factory Floor Bar
Factory Floor Bar can be found next to the Peddler Market. It is the UK’s first bar specialising in drip infusion, tank beer and audio. Inspired by Japanese coffee filtration the team at Factory Floor drip various Campari Group Spirits through different substrates over 12 hour periods. This gives the spirits a unique and wide array of flavours and colours. They even make their own sodas!
Firstly, the process of drip infusion was explained to us and we got to sample some of the spirits. Once we’d learnt about the process, we were able to pick one of their drip and mixers. I went for the Drip 1 which was Appleton Estate Signature Blend Rum Dripped Banana + Pineapple – paired with Homemade Citrus Soda. Again, this is not something I would have usually chosen but as a fan of banana rum, I had to give it a go. There was a great mix of flavours with none of them being too overpowering.
Roku
While we were in Factory Floor, we were treated to food from Roku. Roku is a Japanese restaurant directly opposite Factory Floor and promises authentic Japanese cuisine. They focus on a small menu of things that they do well.
From Roku, we were presented with a crispy pork gyoza and a teryaki chicken skewer. The gyoza was not something that I would have chosen off the menu myself. Both were delicious but I particularly liked the crispy pork gyoza. The contrast of the crispy exterior and the soft, flavoursome interior was fantastic and I could have eaten many more!
B’Reyt Dough
Like most people, I’m a big fan of pizza so I was excited to visit B’Reyt Dough on this tour. B’Reyt Dough was started by two best friends, Adam and Luke with a passion for pizza and was originally a mobile business. They started off at festivals and food markets before finally settling in to their Kelham Island premises. Here you can expect to try fresh Neopolitan pizza cooked in their wood-fired oven. We were shown how all of the speciality pizzas are made from scratch on site and cooked in the pizza oven in 90 seconds. It was amazing to see just how quickly the pizzas were made from start to finish.
We shared a few pizzas between the group, including a classic margarita and a vegetable pizza topped with truffle oil. As you can imagine, these went down a treat! There’s such a stark contrast between freshly made Neapolitan pizzas and the pizzas you usually get in restaurants and takeaways.
Bullion Cafe
I hadn’t heard of Bullion chocolate before my trip to Sheffield but despite this, I was already booked in for the Bullion factory experience the next day, so I was excited to try out the cafe. Bullion is a Sheffield based bean to bar chocolate maker – one of only a handful in the UK.
The Bullion Cafe is based in the Cutlery Works which is a food hall in Neeps End with 14 independent food vendors. At this final stop, we were given a slice of the Bullion Brownie and a taster of the Bullirum. Bullirum is a rum based cocoa nib liqueur. I really enjoyed the brownie as well as the rum, it was the perfect end to the food tour and got me really excited for the visit to the factory. I even bought a bottle of the Bullirum to take home with me.
Overall, I really enjoyed the Kelham Island Food Tour and as a result, we were introduced to a lot of independent businesses that we may have otherwise missed. Learning about the history and culture of Sheffield was wonderful meanwhile, I was able to sample a lot of different foods which wouldn’t have been on my radar had I not been on the tour. Above all, I have found some gems which I will definitely be going back to next time I’m in Sheffield.
