BUSHMILLS, BEER, BREAKFAST AND BATTERED IN BELFAST

I don’t get asked on many press trips and often miss the ones that come my way because I am on the road for my own little endeavours. However, when I got a mail from one of the people foolish enough to pay me for my musings asking if I would represent them on a trip to the Bushmills distillery in Northern Ireland, I jumped at the chance.

The Six Counties (go on, see if you can name them. It’s a bit like naming all Seven Dwarves. There’s always one that gets away) was one of my favourite stops on last year's EATING FOR BRITAIN tour of the U.K and any opportunity to head back again was one I was never going to turn down.

I have visited many distilleries in my time, but never one in Ireland. The Bushmills distillery is definitely one of the more interesting ones I have been shown around. It is set in the small town of the same name about an hour from Belfast where whiskey (always with an “e” in Ireland) has been made since the early 1600’s

Our tour was made even more interesting because our guide was Master Distiller, Colum Egan, who showed us some parts of the distillery, which are not normally open to the public and then led us through a tasting of the range. It wasn’t all to my taste, but I did come away promising to buy myself a bottle of Bushmills Black, their premium blended whiskey which was far more within my price range than my other favourite, the 21 year old matured in Oloroso barrels.

After the tour, the handful of other journalists on the tour persuaded me to join them for a few pints of Guinness at The Harbour bar in the nearby town of Portrush. In a “you couldn’t make it up” scenario, the locals decided to have a bit of a sing song on our arrival, leading to the unlikely sight of three florid faced pensioners being joined by a group of American visitors in impromptu renditions of traditional Irish folk songs and a slightly squawking version of Mr Cash's “Ring of Fire”. The Man in Black is still whizzing around in his eternal resting place as I type.

Inevitably the next morning, most of my companions were a little bit jaded and I decided to perk them up with a proper “Ulster Fry”. On my journey last year, I was lucky enough to meet Peter McKonkey of The Georgian House in Comber, just outside Belfast. His was the finest breakfast I found in the whole of the UK (go and try it and tell me that I am wrong) with superb ingredients sourced from all over Ireland. He did not let us down and by a little before midday, the group was pushing back their chairs, rubbing their bellies and declaring that they would probably never eat again.

They were lying. After our breakfast, we spent the next night enjoying ourselves in Belfast’s pubs, clubs and the bar of the cocktail bar of The Merchant Hotel (one of the very best in the world) Although I hit the hay pretty early on, some of my younger companions partied quite hard and, the next day, were in need of even more restorative stodge.

As luck would have it, around the corner from our hotel was one of Belfast’s most famous chippies, John Long. It’s an odd looking place, the windows of the building covered in protective grating and the door clad in a steel coating. It was empty when we arrived, but soon began to fill up with locals enjoying the enormous portions of cod & chips. It wasn’t the best fish & chips my friends could have tried for their first experience of the genre. The batter could have bubbled up a bit more and the chips needed to be a little less soggy. But, they were not bad, all cooked as they should be in beef dripping and, with the addition of some “bread and spread” I was also able to guide my new friends through the rudiments of fashioning the perfect chip butty.

Fortified once more, the rest of them went off to watch the rugby at a local bar, downing even more Guinness I am sure. I, well I went back to the hotel and back to bed for a few hours. You see there is another very valid reason I don’t go on too many press trips.

I am just too bloody old to keep up.

EATING FOR BRITAIN: BELFAST, DULSE, THE MERCHANT HOTEL and CAYENNE

The journey continued the next morning as Neal pointed our hire car North from his uncle’s house and towards The Giant’s Causeway, that odd little outcrop of rock which the locals claim was built by Irish giant Finn McCool so he could walk to Scotland to have a bit of a barney with his Scottish counterpart.

On the way, we stopped off to sample another one of the potential dishes for my EATING FOR BRITAIN trip, Dulce. Although, little known outside The Six Counties, Dulce is a bit of an obsession in Northern Ireland and is basically seaweed harvested in the early morning and dried on the rocks before being bagged and sold in shops and pubs just about everywhere.

I had wanted to meet one of the producers, but as most of them seem to do this as a sideline while still signing on it was understandable they were a bit reticent to talk to me and were a little less than enthusiastic when we stopped to have a look at where it was laid out to dry. Still, the shopkeepers were more welcoming and for £1.50, I was able to buy a large bag, which Neal and I sampled as we took a chance to look at the stunning scenery on the way to the Causeway. It’s odd stuff alright with the first taste of the chewy seaweed just being of salt, which is why they probably sell it in all the pubs. But, after a few times around the mouth, it begins to release layers of flavour and is actually quite addictive.

The bar at The Merchant Hotel recently won three major awards at the prestigious “Tales of The Cocktail” event in New Orleans, including one for “Best Hotel Bar” Walking into the plush room, it is easy to see why and, by 7pm it was already packed, primarily with visitors rather than the locals who are still coming to terms with the “hideously priced” cocktails.

Er, they should come to London, £7.50 struck me as a bit of a bargain, particularly when the drinks prepared by bartenders, Jack and Hayden under the auspices of manager, Sean Muldoon are up there with anything on offer in the capital. This is a serious bar and the drinks we tried including an excellent Martini, a Manhattan and a Sazerac, three of my tests of a bartender’s skill, were all produced with great presentation and perfect balance.

Definitely worth a visit if you are in Belfast.

If the bar at The Merchant Hotel is worth a visit, Cayenne, the remaining restaurant of the former Paul Rankin empire is, unfortunately, one to avoid, not just for the expense, which is comparable to anything in London, but for its confused menu and poor execution.

I am a fan of Paul Rankin’s. Few UK chefs are as associated with their region as he (Rick Stein and Nigel Haworth, perhaps?) and fewer still have worked so hard to promote the food of their area. Yet, despite the trumpeting of local ingredients on the restaurant website, the menu at Cayenne is a perfect example of what Jay Rayner once described as ‘culinary Esperanto” a mish mash which allowed for “gazpacho” to sit next to crispy duck and “Carpaccio” next to “Thai fish cakes” on the list of starters.

The mains too sat as uneasily on the page as they later did in the stomach. Duck with an “aromatic curry glaze” was offered as an alternative to lamb fillets with “Ras-el Hanout” leaving you imagine that Rankin had given his head chef the challenge of using every last ingredient in the store cupboard and he had proved himself more than up to the task.

Had the execution been up to scratch such an oddly matched parade of dishes might have come over as quirky, unfortunately, the plates that we were presented with had little merit and just came over as ill conceived. Neal’s starter of lobster salad saw three little blobs of decent seafood hidden under over dressed leaves and under cooked potatoes. Yours for a slightly less than good value £10.

My own starter of squid at £8 was better, cooked perfectly beneath a crisp coating and a fiery nahm jim sauce adding all the heat needed without having to dip into a slight incongruous spicy mayonnaise.

The standards again dropped with the main courses. Monkfish, the main event in my special is an expensive ingredient, but for £20 I probably could have expected slightly more fish than the less than palm-sized portion I received. The kitchen had tried to compensate with the addition of broad beans, peas and brown shrimp in a burnt butter as well as a quintet of little potato dumplings, all of which made sense, but the end result was an oily, greasy mess that did its best to hide the purchase of some excellent fish.

Neal’s lamb proved to be the winner in the WTF? Stakes. Cooked perfectly pink, I am sure it was bought from somewhere pretty and the lamb was very happy until they stunned it. It would have been a good deal less sanguine if it had any idea how it would end up, on plate which looked like it had been dropped and reassembled in a hurry.

What tastes of the lamb there may have been were lost in a wash of sauce and Neal pushed far too many slices onto my side plate for me to believe he was enjoying it in any way. He wasn’t and declared “the more I think about it the worse this meal gets”

Side dishes did little to improve his mood and a dry mashed potato with little evidence of the advertised horseradish made him, a good Northern Irish boy, wonder if the province's recent rediscovery of tarring & feathering could be put too better use. I thought the same, but of the shameful handful of string beans that came as a side order.

Our experience to date convinced us that desserts would be little better and we asked our young server, whose charm was the highlight of the meal, for the bill, a breathtaking £86 including service and a bottle of something red, which could arguably reflect the ordering of premium ingredients like monkfish and lobster if they were not served in such tiny portions, but really reflects a menu savagely overpriced for the quality delivered.

I remain a fan of Rankin, I suspect this oddity of restaurant fulfils a need in Belfast. For the life of me I can’t quite think what that need may be, but the place was packed. I can’t help hoping he finds enough restored confidence in the local produce of which he is such a proud advocate, that he soon sheds the need to hide their beauty under such a multi cultural bushel.

So, it may have been a disappointing ending to our restaurant eating in Northern Ireland, but it did not manage to dampen our enjoyment of a part of the country, which impressed me with its friendly people, gorgeous countryside, and on the whole surprisingly lovely food.

EATING FOR BRITAIN: BELFAST, IT'S AN ALTERNATIVE ULSTER FRY

A short trip to Northern Ireland in the company of my good chum Neal, began with a short drive from the airport to the small town of Comber, to the East (I think) of the city. Many of Neal’s relatives live in and around Belfast and, as well as offering a bed for the night, they had put us in touch with some people who could help me in my EATING FOR BRITAIN quest.

After driving through streets still lined with Union flags at the end of marching season, our first port of call was The Georgian House, a recently refurbished restaurant in Comber run by charming owner/chef, Peter McConkey. The restaurant had only been open for a few weeks, but had already won awards for its “Ulster Fry” that artery threatening breakfast containing enough calorific value to feed a sumo for a month. The main problem with the normal example, as with its mainland counterpart,the Full English, is not so much the quantity, but the quality as most people equate cheapness and cheapness of ingredients with value. Too often it is presented with mass produced bacon, sausages made out of reclaimed meat and eggs that have come out of the backside of some ery unhappy chickens

The “fry” at The Georgian House was “very dear” we were told by some of Neal’s relatives, which was put into context when “very dear” turned out to be £5.95. True for the area it was about £2 more than any other we encountered, but you could understand why the moment our plates were delivered. Superb, thick cut bacon, meaty sausages, eggs with golden yellow yolks, thick slices of soda bread, potato farls and some of the best black pudding I have tried in years.

The only ingredient which had us stumped at first, sat in the bottom left hand corner. They looked like little Shanghai dumplings and it was only when I bit into one that I realised that Peter was redintroducing the classic art of turning mushrooms. When I quizzed him about it after our meal he just responded “why not?” you can’t argue with that and, like every other ingredient in our meal, it was top quality. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.

Likewise so is a visit to Aunt Sandra’s Candy Factory, a Belfast institution for well over fifty years and most famous for producing “Yellowman” a garish yellow candy made with baking soda. It’s never seen outside the six counties and even Neal who used to live there had not encountered it before

David Moore the current owner had just finished giving lessons in sweet making to some local schoolchildren and showed us the hooks on which he and his staff still stretched the sugar as it cooled before it was rolled into sweet shapes using cutters from the early part of last century. Using a hammer, David broke bits off a big “Candy Cowpat” of Yellowman for us to try. It is a bit like proto-space dust with an initial sharp taste, which disappears as it crackles in the mouth. Not unpleasant, but you could not eat a lot of it.

By now, both Neal and myself were exhausted and headed back to his relatives for some R&R before a big night out in town.

More to follow