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

Joris Minne

Restaurant 44, Hill Street, Belfast

Restaurant 44, classic monk cheeks with persillade and butter

February 25 2022 04:30 PM

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.

Mind you, it’s not as if these ones are not used to wild weather. They work in the offshore wind energy sector. But still, the way to calm down any French people is by giving them food. And a Monday night in Belfast is a challenge. Nobody with a Michelin star or bib gourmand is open, nobody with any reputation or even an AA rosette. The streets are bare. Until, that is, I remembered a very impressive dinner I’d had long before the lockdowns in Restaurant 44.

When I shouted the name out loud after spending some time on the laptop searching, the advisor was near me and said sure that place closed years ago.

Back in the olden days when a tandoori was £2.90 including rice and poppadoms and you got a pint for under a pound there was a Restaurant 44 on Bedford Street. But this Restaurant 44 is in Hill Street in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter and completely unconnected.

After wobbling with some assistance into the pleasantly lit, spacious and atmospheric dining room – you go past the bar on your way into the restaurant – the group regained some composure. Speaking English as a foreign language when you’re bad with your nerves is tough on the hosts but we persevered starting with the menu.

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What’s the French for monkfish cheeks? Answer: joues de lotte. I remembered this because my French mum’s mum would have cooked cod cheeks, monkfish cheeks and the cheeks of just about any fish big enough to have a chubby smile. They were sold as cheap alternatives to scallops.

Restaurant 44’s version is a simple classic involving much persillade and butter and a very tasty and well-judged potato fondant on the side. Mamie (Granny) would have approved.

In fact, the food elsewhere around the table was all good. Cajun chicken linguine, an ambitious act of cross cultural culinary fertilisation was so good that my co-host asked for a box to take the rest of it home.

Earlier we had a few starters including giant bruschetta with crisped, crunchy bacon, pear, tomatoes, brie and rocket. These were so vast that the two of us who ordered them shared them out with the others who had ordered no starter and were happy dipping toasted bread into some dark and intense tapenade.

One of the visitors ordered a simple trio of tapas. The menu has loads to suit every appetite and she was determined to enjoy a light supper. The tapas menu offers three dishes for £11 and this is where Declan the otherwise excellent and hospitable manager should have raised the red flag.

She ordered deep fried brie with chutney, crispy goat’s cheese fritters with lavender and honey, and fishcakes with tartare. When the trio arrived there was little to distinguish between them visually and all shared the deep fried, breadcrumbed shell. They were good though but would have been better as one of three other possibly more veggie and not fried options.

But this is a very minor point and I swapped one of my cheeks for one each of her tapas (there were many of them on each little dish) so she could enjoy that and the lightly roasted courgettes accompanying the fish.

A slice of accomplished apple and frangipane tart with firm crust and French style open top came with a rich sorbet of indeterminate flavour and a spoonful of whipped cream.

Restaurant 44 is a very comfortable restaurant and Declan is exactly the kind of manager every restaurant owner is after. He served dinner, mixed cocktails and poured pints on a relatively busy evening completely alone. I’ll be back. Not because it’s open on a Monday but because it’s worth another visit.

The bill

Tart £6

Bruschetta £8

Monkfish cheeks £22

Glass of wine £6.50

Total £42.50

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

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