The short version
If you have one dinner, book the Muddlers Club or OX. If you have two, add the Great Room at the Merchant for the room rather than the food, which is nonetheless very good. If you have a Saturday morning, go to St George's Market and eat a Belfast bap standing up.
Book two to three weeks ahead for the top tables on a Friday or Saturday. Midweek you can often walk in, which is another quiet advantage of the north.
The serious rooms
The Muddlers Club sits down an alley in the Cathedral Quarter with almost no signage, which tells you a lot about the confidence. Modern Irish, tasting menu, an open pass, and the best cooking in the city on most nights.
OX, on the Oxford Street waterfront, is the other one. Spare, seasonal, short menu, and a wine bar next door that takes walk ins if the dining room is full. Between them these two are the reason Belfast now gets mentioned in the same sentence as Dublin.
Deanes runs a small group of restaurants across the city, and Deanes EIPIC is the fine dining end of it. It is the most formal option in Belfast and the one to choose for an anniversary or a business dinner.
- Muddlers Club
- Cathedral Quarter, off an alley. Modern Irish tasting menu. Book three weeks out for a weekend.
- OX
- Oxford Street. Seasonal, spare, excellent. The adjoining Cave wine bar takes walk ins.
- Deanes EIPIC
- Howard Street. The formal choice, and the strongest wine list in the city.
- The Great Room, Merchant
- The most beautiful dining room in Ireland, in a Victorian banking hall. Go for afternoon tea if not dinner.
- Home
- Wellington Place. Reliable, all day, and where we send people who do not want a tasting menu.
The bars, which are not a lesser category
The Crown Liquor Saloon is a National Trust property, which is a strange sentence about a pub. Gas lamps, tiled snugs with doors, and it is genuinely as good as the photographs. Go at five, before it fills.
The Duke of York, down a cobbled alley in the Cathedral Quarter, is where the city drinks. Kelly's Cellars, from 1720, is the oldest and the most stubbornly itself. None of these need a booking and all three do decent food, which is a recent development.
St George's Market, and the Belfast bap
The Victorian covered market runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday and it is my favourite free two hours in Belfast. Friday is the variety market, Saturday is food and craft, Sunday adds live music.
Eat a Belfast bap: a soft floury roll with bacon, sausage, egg, soda bread and potato bread in it. It is an Ulster fry compressed into a hand held object and it is exactly as reasonable as it sounds. Get a Sixmilewater or Suki tea beside it and stand up to eat.
One note on booking
Belfast restaurants close more of the week than American visitors expect. Several of the best rooms do not open Sunday or Monday, and some close both. Check the day, not just the time, and if you are here on a Monday, the hotel dining rooms and the Cathedral Quarter bars are the reliable answer.