Legends Café in Batley set to open on Christmas Day to serve festive roast dinner

Marking its first anniversary on December 21, the owners of Legends Café, on Bradford Road, said a lot of places would be closed over the festive season, but they had decided to offer a special Christmas dinner with chicken or lamb and all the trimmings, plus Yorkshire puddings and gravy.

Mohammed Zahoor, who owns the café with his brother Mohammed Zafoor, runs it with support from other family members, including their Bradford businessman father, Manzoor Bahadur.

Mr Zahoor said: “We are excited to celebrate our first year of trade here.

“We have had such a warm welcome from the Batley and Dewsbury communities, it has been better than we ever imagined.

“Our Sunday roast dinners are very popular and we can seat up to 100 people, so we thought a home-cooked Christmas dinner would be a great idea.

“It might be that people don’t want to cook themselves and go out to eat instead.”

The café will open from 10am until 6pm on December 25.

“We offer tasty, traditional, home-cooked food, sometimes with a twist. But on Christmas Day it won’t be turkey curry or anything like that,” he joked.

He said it had taken a lot of hard work to refurbish the building, which had been empty for a few years.

"We have a lot of customers who mention memories of the Legends Bar and there was no way we could have called it anything different," he added.

To mark the one year anniversary, Legends Cafe is offering a 20 per cent discount off all café orders on December 20 and 21.

Previously the café was Legends Bar, once a popular spot on Batley’s “Golden Mile”.

The landmark white Art Deco building closed in July 2020 when trade ceased during the pandemic, after being run by DJ Mick Ingram for 27 years.

The building was formerly the Knottingley Wells pub, which later became The Legends bar in 1993. It was also known as Hollywood Legends, thanks to the Hollywood sign in huge white letters on the grass banking behind the pub.

For more information or to book for Christmas Day, visit www.legendscafe.co.uk