The John Hewitt Bar

This handsome, convivial boozer is deceptive. It opened in 1999 (it's owned and run by the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre), but you could easily mistake it for a classic. It is in every way a "traditional" pub, all solid dark wood and apparent period detail. The bar itself is a grand, polished, glinting shrine. Naturally, there are no gimmicks.

The menu (noon to 3pm, Mon-Sat) is populist – fishcakes, a smoked salmon salad, steak baguette, pasta – but founded on sound local ingredients and delivered by a kitchen that can clearly cook. A sample portion of wild boar sausages with caramelised onion mash, red wine sauce and vegetables was both huge – a theme that, in Belfast – and about as good as sausage'n'mash is going to get. The sausages were naturally top drawer, but that glossy, buttery, roughly worked mash, properly seasoned and brilliantly laced with sweet caramelised onions, was awesome. As was the red wine sauce, a meaty reduction that smacked of deglazed roasting pans. The John Hewitt carries beers from Lisburn's Hilden Brewery, Ireland's oldest independent (from £3.30 a pint) – its eponymous bitter is a moderately tasty, pleasantly hoppy amber session beer – and will host the Great Northern Irish Beer & Cider Festival, from 4 July to Saturday 9.
• Meals £5.95-£8.25. 51 Donegall Street (028-9023 3768, thejohnhewitt.com)

Common Grounds

"Coffee not profit" is the motto at Common Grounds (geddit?), a cafe within Belfast's City Church – but run as a separate entity – which funds community projects in the developing world. Looking at its hip young staff and student/lecturer clientele, you would never guess that this place grew out of a church group, but for the unusual emphasis on ethical and fairly traded products. God may be in the details, here, but He keeps Himself very much to Himself. What you will notice is the very good coffee (from £1.65, supplied by local roasters, Bailies), the fantastic cakes and scones (around £1.80), and a reasonably priced menu of sandwiches, wraps and daily specials, such as red Thai vegetable curry.

The breakfast deal – tea or coffee and a bacon bap, £2.50 (8am-11am) – is highly recommended. You get a two-cup pot of proper tea, dark, tannin-packed, guaranteed to kick-start your morning, and the roll is spot on. The bacon is dry-cured and served on a floury, partially toasted bap, with a dollop of surprisingly good tomato chutney. Surprisingly good, that is, given that replacing Heinz tomato sauce with something homemade is, normally, a complete waste of any kitchen's time.
• Breakfast items £1.40-£3, sandwiches/wraps £3.80-£4.95, hot meals £3.15-£5.95. 12-24 University Avenue (028-9032 6589, commongrounds.co.uk)

Rocket & Relish

Chef-owner Chris Boyd started out selling gourmet burgers at festivals from a converted Airstream caravan. Rocket & Relish was a commended runner-up, in fact, to London's celebrated Meatwagon, at the 2011 Street Food Awards. More recently, Boyd opened a bricks and mortar burger joint on trendy Lisburn Road. It is a smart space, spare, industrial and fronted, amusingly, by a wide strip of vivid green Astroturf where you can take a seat and munch outdoors. Even if you eat in, the burgers come simply wrapped in paper. You have to ask for cutlery. You drop your rubbish in a couple of vintage aluminium bins.

It is all brilliantly basic, until, that is, you come to the burgers, which come in 15 varieties, including a cranberry and brie; a burger with maple-cured bacon and a Cashel blue cheese dressing; and several chicken versions, including a Caesar-dressed breaded breast. A cheese and relish sampler actually consists of a 6oz burger topped with mature cheddar, country relish, aioli, rocket, fried onions and fresh tomato. In one way, it's a feat of burger engineering that it all holds together. The crisp-shelled burger buns are slightly doughy and absorbent and mould themselves around the contents. That is a crucial point and one that is often overlooked by other burger slingers. On the other hand, could less be more? There are a lot of strong flavours competing between those buns. And being ultra picky, the nicely charred, coarsely ground patty (of prime Northern Irish beef) could do with a shade more seasoning, too. But, otherwise, these are seriously good burgers. It is little wonder Rocket & Relish is attracting such attention. The lunchtime deal of any 6oz burger with chips or a drink (£4.95, 11.30am-3.30pm) is Belfast's best bargain.
• Burgers £4-£4.75. 479-481 Lisburn Road (028-9066 5655, rocketandrelish.com)

Grub

With its generically funky, chunky modish design and its neat green and white colour scheme, you could easily mistake this takeaway cafe for a slick chain, and walk on by. Approach the counter, however, and it is clear that Grub is a cut above its high street competitors. It's not just the signs explaining Grub's dedication to using local, seasonal produce – and how it gives away any leftovers to Belfast's homeless – but also the way that, at the counter, the staff rifle through a breakdown of that day's one-pot dishes, all cooked fresh on-site, with seemingly honest enthusiasm. As well as those daily-changing one pots, such as chilli, Thai curry, a chicken chowder and parsnip soup, all served with rice or breads, Grub also serves reputedly good deli sandwiches and salads.

The Irish stew looked a little stodgy and anaemic, but the potatoes had absorbed plenty of flavourful stock to take on a mushy, comforting texture, the chunks of carrot were numerous enough to add a perky sweetness and I unearthed a reasonable amount of good lamb. All in all, for such a simple and cheap dish it had a surprising depth of flavour. On a cold winter's day, it would be just the ticket. A Grub cappuccino, however, was pretty average.
• Sandwiches, salads and one-pot dishes £3.25-£4.50. 13 Wellington Place (028-9031 4925, grubbelfast.com)

Café Conor

The one-time studio of renowned local artist William Conor, Café Conor is nowadays a polished, airy cafe decorated with Neil Shawcross's huge black and white silhouettes of shapely women with big hips. Perhaps Shawcross's models liked to overindulge in Conor's best known dish, its Ulster Fry, and who could blame them? The "fry" – or, as Café Conor call it, the "big breakfast" – is one of the foundations of Northern Irish cuisine. It's the full English and then some – with added fried soda farl and potato bread. Almost everywhere in the province serves a version, but few are as sharp as Conor's. The sausages are a nominally seasoned plain pork (the correct banger for breakfast), the bacon is excellent, the fried egg bright and fresh. The Clonakilty black pudding – relatively dry, crumbly, full of oatmeal, fragrantly spiced – is very tasty. The only criticism would be that, while Café Conor's all-day breakfast menu is often praised for being clean and greaseless, I'd have liked a little butter, a little moisture on that great gastronomic comfort blanket, the potato bread. It also sells fantastic-looking scones and bakery goods (eat-in, £1.75), and while most of the mains nudge or break the £10 barrier, the daily lunch specials, such as spiced trout on chargrilled focaccia with curried potatoes and spring onion salad (£6.95), are generally affordable.
• Breakfast items £3.95-£6.75, regular mains from £8.50. 11a Stranmillis Road (028-9066 3266, cafeconor.com)

Rhubarb

Tucked away off Bruce Street, tiny Rhubarb is easily missed but worth hunting out. Particularly if you are staying at the nearby Days Inn. At night, it turns into a BYO restaurant which is too expensive for the purposes of this "budget" round up, but by day it operates as a casual cafe, the kitchen turning out good, honest, freshly cooked food at keen prices. Breakfast includes French toast with maple syrup and grilled bacon and, of course, a "full fry" (£5.50), while lunch runs from homemade steak burger and classic Irish bacon, cabbage and buttered mash, to a warm citrus-dressed pear, walnut and crispy pork salad.

A sample plate of steak and mushroom stroganoff from the specials board was rich and creamy and broadly delivered: an earthy, mushroomy meatiness and, in the sauce, sweet, fruity paprika flavours and a certain peppery fizzle. Not bad at all for £5.95. The staff are friendly, too. One warning though, you may have to put up with the vagaries of local radio station, 97.4 Cool FM, while you eat. Corona's pumping Euro-rave anthem Rhythm of the Night is no digestif.
• Breakfast from £3.50, soups/sandwiches £3.50, meals £4.95-£7.50. 2 Little Victoria Street (028-9020 0158, rhubarb-belfast.co.uk)

Molly's Yard

A converted Victorian stable block in the grounds of College Green House by Queens University, the bijou Molly's pursues a twin-track strategy, with its bistro and dinner menus in various formulations through the week. Budget travellers need to hit Molly's when the bistro menu is available as it includes several sharply executed sub-£10 dishes, such as a "proper" Irish stew or fresh linguine with spring greens and a basil cream sauce. There are also cheaper snackier dishes available, like homemade soup with the kitchen's own chocolate stout take on that Northern Irish staple, wheaten bread.

A sample main from the specials board, of (famous Shankill Road fishmonger) Walter Ewing's smoked mackerel on thick toast with salad and tapenade (£7.95), was a thoughtful plate of food. The smoky density of the mackerel was nicely offset by the pointed black olive tapenade and the fresh, zingy flavours present in little tangles of tomato, shallot, red pepper and spring onion, a layer of pea shoots and red chard, and the generous dressing of grassy olive oil. Molly's serves several real ales from its parent company, Hilden brewery, and Hilden's sub-label, College Green. The latter's lemony Belfast Blonde (£3.10 a pint) made a good foil for the mackerel. There is a pleasant courtyard where you can eat on sunny days and, beer fans note, if you eat between noon and 5pm, you can get a pint for just £2.50. The service, incidentally, is a lesson in easygoing hospitality – super-efficient, chatty but in no way overbearing.
• Bistro menu, snacks/starters £4.50-£7.25, mains £5-£10.25. 1 College Green Mews, off Botanic Avenue (028-9032 2600, mollysyard.co.uk)

Little Wing Pizzeria

This small Northern Irish chain likes to cast itself as a pioneer, an innovator bringing authentic "Naples style" pizza to Belfast (there's also a branch in Bangor). There is much talk of pizzas being blast-cooked in its stone ovens, Italian tomatoes imported from Parma and its use of genuine mozzarella. With its brightly punchy tomato sauce, good mound of rocket, decent if sparingly distributed mozzarella and porky, spicy salsiccia sausage, my sampler largely backed up such hype. The base was OK, but neither paper thin nor properly charred. It had a slightly stiff crispness, whereas the base of a truly exceptional pizza would have a real suppleness, an airiness, a chewy vibrancy of flavour.

That said, if you visit at the right time, Little Wings still offers remarkable value. For £4.75 (11am-4pm, Mon-Fri) you can get a six-inch pizza and a half portion of salad. The sharply-dressed panzanella was very impressive, better than the pizza, in fact, packed as it was with parmesan, fresh lettuce, fruity green olives, capers, sweet roasted peppers and bite-sized chunks of toasted ciabatta that had absorbed a little of the dressing. At Little Wings, you can also get individual pizza slices and "tortini" pizza wraps to takeaway (slice and drink, £2.75, 11am-4pm, Mon-Fri).
• Main menu: starters from £2, pizza from £5.95. 10 Ann Street (028-9024 7000, littlewingpizzeria.com). Other branches at 322 Lisburn Road and 201 Upper Newtownards Road

Mourne Seafood Bar

A restaurant fast approaching "iconic" status in Belfast, Mourne Seafood Bar, or MSB, is never less than good value, but, not unexpectedly, dinners break this series's self-imposed £10-a-head limit. But slip in during the day, when certain dishes are slightly cheaper, and you will feel less self-conscious about just snacking on a starter portion of locally smoked salmon, Santa Fe fishcakes with salad and guacamole, a medium pot of mussels (£6.50), or half a dozen oysters from Mourne's own shellfish beds at Carlingford Lough. Seafood chowder is ubiquitous in Belfast, but MSB chef Andy Rae's version (£5) is light and luxuriously creamy, a sensational seafood lucky dip mined with a little potato and generously seasoned with leek and garlic. Pair it with a half of Mourne's Oyster Stout (£1.65) for a cheap but interesting lunch with a real flavour of Belfast.

The stout is brewed for the restaurant by the Kilkeel brewery in Whitewater, and like a German schwarz beer, it is full of chocolatey roasted flavours but is surprisingly light and crisp. If you forgo alcohol, incidentally, you could eat one of a handful of the main courses which come in just under £10, such as a special of smoked haddock with summer vegetables, soft poached egg and herb velouté, or the homemade fish fingers with salad and tartare sauce. The staff are warmly welcoming and well-drilled, and the restaurant is a great space, too – a dark, cosy and informal, with a bar running along one wall and a fishmonger's shop at the entrance.
• Snacks/light lunches £5-£7, selected mains £8-£10. 34-36 Bank Street, (028-9024 8544, mourneseafood.com)

Yellow Door Deli

If £5.95 seems a lot to pay for a sandwich, Eat in the Yellow Door Deli, and you'll find it's a full and filling meal of real quality. A sample beef sandwich arrives in two huge doorstep wedges on exemplarily fresh parmesan bread, stuffed with good if slightly overdone beef, rocket, pokily hot wholegrain mustard and a thick layer of secondary salad. Even better are the two portions of salad on the side: a beautiful rice salad with pesto, parmesan and chilli, and a luxuriously thick and creamy dill-spiked potato salad (available separately, £1.35 for 100g).

The gourmet sandwiches are £3.95 to take away, and Yellow Door also knocks out cheaper items – ham and cheese croissants, ciabatta pizzas, pies, sausage rolls – prepared with the same care and emphasis on quality regional ingredients. Its cakes should not be missed. An almond and raspberry slice is £1.50 very well spent.
• Snack items £1.35-£3, sandwiches £3.95-£5.95. 427 Lisburn Road (028-9038 1961, yellowdoordeli.co.uk)

Getting there

EasyJet (easyjet) flies to Belfast from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Luton, Gatwick and Stansted from £18.99 one-way including taxes. Malmaison Belfast (028-9022 0200, malmaison.com) is offering two nights in a double room, breakfast each morning and dinner on the first night for just £175 per room, booked by phone. For further information on Belfast, visit Discover Ireland (discoverireland.com)