By Andrea Cleghorn
“An army marches on its stomach” is a quote attributed to Napoleon, but it applies just as easily to 21st-century tourists. Take interesting, delicious food out of any trip and you are left with a hollow experience for everyone.
One Friday night on a recent tour to Northern Ireland, the entertainment on the Belfast docket was a five-hour food crawl through the city. Caroline Wilson picked us up at the Europa Hotel on Great Victoria Street, wearing a black Tour and Taste T-shirt and jeans, the uniform of the company she founded.
“After 15 years I was tired of lawyering. I asked myself, ‘What do I like to do?” She answered herself, ‘Well, I like to eat and I like to drink. “So I quit and founded this company where I could do what I loved best. The Year of Food and Drink was coming up for Northern Ireland, so the timing seemed right.” The timing was very right: she was named Local Food Hero of Ulster in 2015 and judged the Great Taste Awards last year.
If I didn’t know better, I would think we were all just randomly ambling around the city visiting Caroline’s friends, seeing what they were up to, all of us sampling whatever they were selling that day. No money changed hands, which encouraged this feeling.
First, we went to the Mourne Seafood Bar, taking its name from the highest mountains in Northern Ireland. The owner Bob McCoubrey himself was arranging platters of prawns, cracked crab claws, langoustines, mussels. Maybe I’ve missed a few, but a little of everything that was hauled in fresh that day.
We stood around big barrels, some of us with glasses of icy white wine, others with pints of Guinness, stuffing ourselves with one delicacy after another. There was a tarp stretched over the barrel tables and most of them were filled at 3:30 in the afternoon with other guests doing what we were doing. Bob’s book about his business was on display and he was a most genial host, eating and drinking with the rest of us.
Of course, there was wheaten (Irish soda bread) and butter, as well focaccia with butter, along with melted butter for the shellfish. The thought “pace yourself” flitted through my head and was gone.
Irish cooking has long been disparaged for its heavy reliance on the potato. I say, what exactly is wrong with three kinds of potatoes on a dinner plate, as long as there is meat there, too?
From Bank Square, we ambled over to Sawers Deli in Fountain Centre, as ancient and revered as a deli can be. We were greeted by proprietor Kieran Sloan. Sloan has been there forever. OK, maybe not since 1897, but he arrived in 1985. He greeted our guide Caroline warmly, with plenty of goodwill spilling over to the rest of us.
Initially, he held a small board of cheeses, but that was just the beginning. We went inside the store and were offered samples of the meats, condiments and prepared foods that have made Sawers famous.
Images in the gallery below are all (c) Andrea Cleghorn, 2017 all rights reserved
Click each image twice to see it at full size
As we passed McKay’s Sweets on Queen’s Arcade with the sign “probably the oldest sweet shop in town” in town,” the former solicitor grumbled, “It would take about 15 minutes to find out if that is true!” I almost expected her to pull out her cell phone, or “mo-bile” as she calls it, to set the record straight but she let it go.
We moved on, passing Belfast’s impressive City Hall built in 1906, in Donegall Square. The Garrick Bar, founded in 1870 is on the site of the men’s club of the same name, frequented by William Thackeray some 30 years earlier.
Not only did it have heavy mahogany paneling, Victorian-era lamps and a vibe that encouraged a good time for everyone in the smallish room with a massive beer selection.
This has the best champ in Belfast, Caroline said, as she opened the door for the rest of us. Ireland has long been scorned for its reliance on potato, but champ is to potatoes as filet mignon is to a McDonald’s burger.
The secret to champ is the white pepper, plenty of it, she told us. That, and soaking the scallions in milk before stirring them into the mashed potatoes, adding butter, then more butter, and, finally, a nab of butter in a well on top, But the butter is universal, the difference is all in the white pepper.
What did we drink to wash down big bowls of champ? MacIver’s traditional dry cider, and we did as we were told. Eventually, we got up and moved on to Coppi.
Located in the elegant St. Anne’s Square with its enormous columns and acres of white marble, Coppi is black and white and stylish all over.
Once seated, we shared a heavy stream of cicchetti, the Italian equivalent of Spanish tapas; small plates; gnocchi; and individual pizzas (pizzette) that featured lots of goat cheese, duck, and herbs. The drink served to us at Coppi was a light Prosecco from Valdobbiadene.
But that wasn’t all. After leaving the square we passed the oldest building in Belfast, circa 1680, adjacent to McHugh’s Pub which dates to 1711.
But we did pass it and headed to The Friend at Hand in Cathedral Square for a whiskey tasting.
Willie Jack is the owner of the new store, but already there are several of his own lines of the product.
But the startling feature is this shop/museum are the displays of vintage bottles and equipment that goes back for a century, all used for the manufacture of what George Bernard Shaw described as “liquid sunshine.”
With Old Bushmills up north, Jameson and Midleton in the Republic, the rainy island has short dark days half the year.
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Images in the gallery below are all (c) Andrea Cleghorn, 2017 all rights reserved
Click each image twice to see it at full size
After a little Irish whiskey was tasted — no wisky, that is from Scotland — there was just one last stop: Irish coffee, but of course.
So our little army marched along to Skipper Street to the grandest of our stops, the Merchant Hotel. A former financial institution, the facade with its colonnade was imposing and impressive, though not as much as the immodestly named Great Room Restaurant.
We entered the restaurant, were moved on to the bar, and into a small private room. Quiet, carpeted, elegant. The Irish Coffee was what the Irish would call gorgeous, its coffee mixed with whiskey, brown sugar topped with a thick ice cold layer of cream that wouldn’t dare venture into the mixture below until invited by the drinker tipping her glass cup.
It was a delicious way to end the evening and we said goodnight to our intrepid new friend Caroline.
Breakfast at St. George’s Market the following day came much too early.
Editor’s Note: Bedford writer Andrea Cleghorn shares her Irish travel odysseys with The Bedford Citizen’s readers
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