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News [1]
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Restaurant Review: Hinch Brasserie deserves to be a tourist attraction in its own right

Joris Minne

Hinch Brasserie, 19 Carryduff Road, Ballynahinch, Tel: 028 9279 1180, www.hinchdistillery.com/brasserie

Cyprus Avenue

Afternoon tea

Comber Earlies

Ninth Wave Gin cured salmon

The Hinch burger

Cyprus Avenue

July 24 2021 08:00 AM

Restaurants attached to visitor centres, tourist attractions and museums used to send a shiver up my spine. Chips soggy as sea slugs, week-old scones that shrivelled your tongue, and coffee and tea which tasted of weak Bovril, served by sullen staff, these places were the bottom feeders in the hospitality industry’s ecology.

But we all wised up a few years ago, put our collective foot down and said: enough. If you’re going to charge us for this sewage, we’ll not be back. This has changed and there are now excellent tag-on cafes in which to revive your drooping spirits after an afternoon of culture. The Ulster American Folk Park in Tyrone now boasts a social enterprise restaurant so good it has become a destination itself. The same goes for the Ulster Museum, Hillsborough Castle’s restaurant and the MAC.

Joining this list of quality restaurants in tourism and cultural attractions is the Hinch Brasserie. An integral component in the Hinch Distillery, Terry Cross’s beautiful new development just beyond Carryduff which includes a whiskey and gin distillery, a gift shop which will effortlessly suck the money out of your wallet, and the kind of event facilities to make any wedding very classy, the Brasserie is a fully matured bar restaurant with all the right Irish design references. There is a giant elk skull and antlers above the bar and very comfortable, well upholstered seating. American country club types would love it.

And now that we are having a proper summer, there are few places better placed in which to enjoy the sun and your lunch than the courtyard.

Four of us tanned ourselves at a table while having an early dinner last Sunday. Pimms and Chablis, cold beers and cokes brought us for that moment into the heart of summer. Starters including salads of crab and prawn, Ballylisk cheese mousse, and gin cured salmon seemed the best alternative to a soup of the day with treacle wheaten bread — no matter the weather, we love our soup, but not today.

The salmon cured with the distillery’s own Ninth Wave Gin came in three generous, thick cut saddles accompanied by a mound of shaved fennel, compressed cucumber, horseradish panacotta, seacress, picked vegetables and a buttermilk and dill oil dressing. The panacotta will stay with me for a while, the prickly heat of the horseradish sparkling through the smooth cream. The buttermilk dressing over the tender but firm salmon added a richness and welcome soft sourness.

The Ballylisk Triple Rose cheese, something which really ought not to be messed about with as it’s such a quality product, was whipped into a mousse to match Chris Fearon’s St Tola’s creation in Deanes at Queens. Joined by a band of pickled walnuts, beetroot meringue, bitter beetroot terrine and carrot salad, white grape puree and micro basil salad, this had all the components you’d hope for eating outside in the sun — refreshing, crunchy and tangy.

We had all wanted the crab and prawn salad, another colossal offering featuring chilli shrimp butter, apple, radishes, and shaved fennel, but a review of four crab salads would have limited this column.

The Atlantic cod, roasted to crinkle the skin and leave the flakes of white fish beneath pearly like slippery piano keys, was bolstered by a plate of spring peas, fava beans, pearl onion, charred gem lettuce and warm tartare sauce. I thought I’d need the chips to beef it up but I was wrong.

The Hinch Burger is a monument to Down’s beef butchers. Ground shin beef with smoked cured beef brisket make the texture both crumbly and firm, the outside properly charred and crunchy in places. The final assembly included melted cheddar, caramelised bacon and onion jam, house pickled cucumber but of the promised beer battered onion ring there was no sign. This was no bad thing as the volumes here are already insurmountable.

It is rare that volume meets quality head on in a delicious collision like this. But we will know where to go the next time such a collision is called for.

THE BILL

Ballylisk x 2 . £15.90

Chicken wings . £7.95

Cured salmon . £8.50

Burger .£ 14.95

Crab salad x 2 . £ 33

Roast cod .£17.50

Onion strings . £3.95

Truffle fries x 2 . £7.90

Desserts . £13

Drinks .£76.80

Total . £199.45

Restaurant Review: Hinch Brasserie deserves to be a tourist attraction in its own right

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