Wellington Street, Belfast (028 9024 6712). Meal for two, including wine and service, £90
This week's mediocre experience is as much a failing on my part as it is the restaurant's. Not that I was responsible for the miserable cooking; believe me, if I had been in charge the food would have been so much better, though that's not saying much. It's more to do with what you are reading. This was, shamefully, my first time reviewing in Belfast, so I thereforewanted to make it a right old Bobby Dazzler, a place you need to know about. Because what's the point of me going all that way merely to tell you about a restaurant serving grim food? So I sought advice, studied websites, cross-referenced lists. I struck out the obvious – Michael Deane's place, and the last remaining outpost of Paul Rankin's once great empire, Cayenne – and hunted for the quirky, the unlikely. The sort of place where locals would go for an elbows-on- the-table night out.
Made In Belfast is certainly that. There's lots to like about it. A cavernous space down an alleyway opposite the headquarters of the Northern Bank which, famously, was robbed of £26m in 2004, it is self‑consciously eccentric. The room has been assembled rather than designed; the furniture a curious mixture of picnic tables and mismatched chairs, and other stuff that nobody else wanted at the end of a car boot sale. There are squishy sofas, too many dangly lamps, a lot of art of the sort constructed in the special corner with the safety scissors and the glitter. Which is nice. As are the staff. They are relaxed, friendly, solicitous and engaged; all those things it's hard to fake. Made In Belfast may be full-on. It may be mannered. But it looks like a comfortable place in which to spend a dark night.
Until, that is, they bring the menu. Printed in a retro typewriter script, it's exhausting. Every single ingredient in every single dish is listed in a jumble of ill-fitting type. It uses the word "Irish" 16 times. The beef is Irish. The chicken is Irish. So are the mushrooms, the butter, the goat's cheese, the bacon, the beetroot... You get the point. So did we. But there is no value whatsoever in droning on about the provenance of your ingredients if you are then going to take them, literally and figuratively, down a dark alley and give them a kicking.
A couple of things were good: thinly sliced rounds of beetroot, described as a carpaccio (it isn't; it's just thinly sliced), layered with salad leaves, walnuts and good goat's cheese was a testament to all that shopping. At the other end of the meal a "gluten-free organic chocolate brownie" – it's that sort of place – was intense and squidgy, and came with a tiny chocolate cup filled with vodka, which numbed the pain. Other things didn't. A starter of tandoori chicken wings brought a bunch of pallid, unjointed wings which were just undercooked, the skin barely crisp. Of the Indian spicing or the application of searing heat there was no evidence. It was served in a bucket; other items were served in enamelled dishes. "It looks like the crockery fell off the back of the local prison," said my companion. He had a point.
The "cow pie" also came in a bucket-like dish. A pastry lid gave way to a grossly overthickened, oversalted grey gravy bobbing with hunks of underbraised beef and dense, heavy mushrooms. A bung of fatty, melted cheese floated on the top. It was all relentless. The pig who offered up his belly for the other main may have been Irish and outdoor bred, but he was violated by a cacophonous apricot-and-pistachio stuffing, black pudding mash and a simple lack of cooking time. Oh, and no crackling. What is the point of killing a pig for pork belly without crackling?
I finished with what was described on the menu as a "retro" crème brûlée. I asked the waiter what was retro about it. She didn't know. "It's just our way of doing it," she said. Which is to say, a little clumsily, with an overthickened crème and a very heavy sugar topping. Which actually is a bit retro; nowadays most places do it better. The accompanying lemon biscuit was nice, though.
If all this was cheap it would be less troubling – but it isn't. Our bill, with a bottle of wine, came to just over £90. It's a lot for not very much. Both you and I deserved better.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
