Restaurant Reviews

May 2022

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Joris Minne Opinion Restaurant review: Whitehead’s Lighthouse Bistro a beacon for seafront cuisine

Neighbourhood rivalries are the throbbing engine of keeping up with the Joneses, street-envy wars and postcode one-up-manship. We are proud to live in the areas we call home and point to the good schools, quality of housing and access to amenities. But the dispute-ending nuclear button we reach for to underline the superiority of our district is our restaurants.

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Home: Belfast city centre restaurant's menu definitely one to experience

While the Belfast City Marathon is an opportunity to commend those pounding the streets, it makes for getting around somewhat difficult.

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Joris Minne Opinion Restaurant review: Don’t sleep on Sleepy Hollow’s delicious tasting menus

Dinner table components including linen, crystal, cutlery and crockery play a far deeper and profound role in my life than I thought. Obviously, drinking beer, wine and cocktails in glasses whose designs have been finely adjusted over the decades to become the perfect vessels, makes all the difference and enhances the enjoyment. It’s like drinking tea out of bone china. It just feels better even if you’re not sure why.

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April 2022

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Joris Minne Opinion Restaurant review: East Belfast’s Little Thai Cafe and Bistro offers up a feast even if you’re not in ‘Ballyhackaboho’

You’d think eating out in east Belfast starts and ends in Ballyhackamore. Once you go past Il Pirata heading out of town, there is nothing left to capture your heart. It’s all fast food and garage forecourts after that.

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Restaurant review: Classy Ormeau Road restaurant Shed has art of great food down to a tee

Momentum is a strange phenomenon, but a powerful one nonetheless.

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Joris Minne Opinion Three tasty lunches in Belfast that won’t leave you broke

Holiday lunches and working lunches are so different in character and experience you might as well compare a Friday night to a Monday morning. Yet both are equally attractive to me. The holiday lunch might be more relaxed and joyful because of the company you’re in and the unbridled approach to the wine list. But a working lunch has the effect of soothing drooping spirits and reigniting relationships.

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Joris Minne Opinion Restaurant Review: Tasty Indian food that wouldn’t look out of place in Mumbai

Belfast has notions about itself and its restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, we are all very proud to have three Michelin-starred diners in the city and a cohort of excellent, modern and often exciting mid-range brasserie and bistro type restaurants. But where are the great Italians, French, Spanish, south Asian, Chinese, Thai and others?

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Six by Nico restaurant review: No need to Rome very far to find a tasting menu for under £40

The tasting menu is creeping further and deeper into restaurant land. No longer confined to the high church of Michelin-starred poshness where the stellar reputation of the chef is such that we gladly relinquish our freedom of choice and accept anything they put in front of us, the tasting menu straight-jacket is finding growing numbers of willing buyers in less august places.

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March 2022

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Ziti by Knags: Great new Glengormley Italian gives Belfast’s finest a run for their money

There’s a certain hospitality hubris which afflicts some city dwellers.

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Restaurant review: Fingers crossed a whole lotta love is shown for new east Belfast spot Lottie

Just when you’re getting used to Yugo East’s modern ways down it goes into eating-out history, filed under “Too Exciting for East Belfast”.

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Joris Minne Opinion Restaurant review: Ulster University’s Academy Restaurant is a practice in the culinary arts

The future of hospitality looks rosy if Ulster University’s Academy Restaurant is anything to go by. Young, willing and smart students learn the ropes in this beautifully appointed working restaurant under the watchful eye of their lecturers and tutors.

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Restaurant review: Gong Belfast serving fine Asian food

Gong

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Review: Waste Food tasting menu by Paul Cunningham at Banana Block

You never know what chef Paul Cunningham will come up with next. Paul is the Bear Grylls of cooking. He can turn a piece of rotting bark from a woodland floor into a ham sandwich. Or something close.

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Restaurant review: Belfast’s Shu has lost none of its charm over the years and is simply ‘Shuperb’

Shu: 253 Lisburn Road, Belfast. Tel: 028 90381655

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Restaurant Review: Wackoz street food in the home of St Patrick nourishes the soul

There’s a lot of holy ground in Ireland. From cathedrals to mass rocks and countless chapels, temples and meeting houses in between, they are an expression of our love of all that is holy. But it is the calm and misty beauty of graveyards and ruined abbeys, friaries and monasteries that best capture the feeling of lonely, contemplative spirituality.

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February 2022

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Joris Minne Opinion Restaurant 44 review: Comfortable dining that Granny would have approved of

The bar was low. I just needed a restaurant open on a Monday night in Belfast for a group of triple stormed French travellers badly shaken by their recent journey from Nice. The French require more than a couple of stiff brandies in such situations.

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Joris Minne Opinion Chapter V restaurant review: Venue writes a new story with ambitious meals and ingredients

It’s not every day you’ll find a powerful puck of breathy nduja, a warming spoonful of champ and some sweet plum sauce on the same plate. For that experiment in fusion cooking you have to travel to the Moy where chef Conor McCabrey and his wife Ellen run Chapter V.

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How Belfast man’s restaurant reviews ‘just blew up’ into a thriving TikTok agency

A Northern Ireland man has described how he went from furlough to running a TikTok agency in a year.

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Smugglers Inn: Good homely grub but no real thrills at this country restaurant

The Smugglers Inn Restaurant

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Joris Minne Opinion Coco restaurant review: Where the works of art are on the plate and the walls

Never judge a restaurant by the pictures on the walls. What ever crimes against art may be being committed, always remember that your tastes may not the same as others, and anyway, you’re here for the food and service.

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Joris Minne Opinion Basil Sheils restaurant review: Armagh institution may appear chaotic but it runs like a Swiss clock

Weddings and funerals are the cement which keep Irish society distinctly cohesive. We love a good wedding as much as we appreciate a funeral, because both events provide an opportunity for extended and scattered families and friends to become reacquainted. When our dad died in the autumn, loads of family friends travelled from afar to be at the wake and funeral and seeing everybody again brought genuine joy to the solemnity.

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January 2022

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Ternary: It’s turning heads

Ternary

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Joris Minne Opinion James Street restaurant review: Chef Stringer breathes new life into old favourite

Like pet owners, restaurant owners end up looking like their restaurants. Or is it the other way round? Let me explain. Michael Deane, with his luxuriant coiffe, looks like an artist of the romantic period and his restaurant interiors subtly reflect this gentle and thoughtful mood.

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Joris Minne Opinion Il Pirata restaurant review: We’d forgotten just how good it is...

It was one of those wet, miserable nights. So miserable was it that the only thing for it was to unbolt myself from the sofa and go out into it, defiantly, and enjoy a bit of dinner somewhere.

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Joris Minne Opinion Killeavy Castle Estate’s tasting menu needs some reworking

Ambition and confidence might be two of the key attributes needed to make any project successful but when both are misplaced things can quickly unravel. Killeavy Castle Estate which occupies a commanding position on the lower slopes of south Armagh’s Slieve Gullion facing eastwards and southwards towards the Mourne mountains and Louth, is a marvellous restoration. Clearly, investment, good design and management have resulted in a hotel which boasts beautiful bedrooms with some of the most stylish and accessible ensuite bathrooms anywhere.

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Restaurant review: The Mandarin in Ballyhackamore

Some years ago, it would have been a fair assumption there were more Chineses in Northern Ireland than any other kind of restaurant.

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Restaurant Review: El Tapas Grá… food made with love and bursting with big flavours

Derry City has Galway vibes. This was the verdict of our youngest following a family day trip to the Maiden City during Twixmas. We went to the Tower Museum, walked the old town’s walled circumference, paid our respects at Free Derry corner and tried unsuccessfully to get into Peadar O’Donnell’s (there was no room at the inn thanks to Covid sit-down restrictions). And when we entered the doors of El Tapas Grá for something to eat before heading back to Belfast, I knew exactly what she meant.

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The best restaurants we visited in 2021

We all know that 2021 was another tough year for the hospitality industry.

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December 2021

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Joris Minne Opinion A Peculiar Tea restaurant review: Tasting menu in south Belfast simply brew-tiful

A Peculiar Tea, 44 University Road, Belfast. www.a-peculiar-tea.com

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Restaurant review: Belfast’s classy Howard Street is a byword for consistency

Howard Street, 56 Howard Street, Belfast, Tel: 02890 248631