Lir and Native Seafood & Scran, The Marina, Coleraine, Northern Ireland BT52 1EY. Meal for two, starters £7.50-£8.50, mains £16-£29, desserts £7.50, wines from £24
The restaurant stands by the river. The river runs down to the sea, where the fish swim deep. The fish are brought to the restaurant that stands by the river which runs down to the sea. Do excuse me, but there’s just something about the simplicity of Lir, hard by the River Bann in Northern Ireland, which brings out the terrible Ernest Hemingway parody act in me. I promise it won’t happen again. The Coleraine business was born out of a fascination with the sea, and a belief by owners Rebekah and Stevie McCarry that not enough of the fabulous seafood caught by the day boats working off the Northern Irish coast ends up being eaten by those who live on the shore.
The idea behind Lir, an old Irish word for sea, may be simple; the journey to get here was not. In January 2020 they took over the gracefully knackered yacht club at Coleraine, with plans for their restaurant. A pandemic got in the way. With a young family to support, they set up an online fishmonger’s, delivering local fish to local doors, wrapped only in paper tied with twine. Eventually, they were able to open the kitchen, but the facilities were so basic they headed towards street food: lobster rolls, squid shawarma, ling fish dogs and the like.
Eventually they raised the money for a refurbishment which ended up taking more than two years. In the meantime, they set up another venue called the Pool, in a bare-bones shed on the beach at Portstewart, which housed a wet-fish counter, a restaurant and a live events space. It had shutters for walls and when the storms came, as they always do around these parts, it would flood. One surge almost wiped them out. Even so the Pool went on to win multiple restaurant awards.
Now here they are, back in the refurbished yacht club, which is clean-lined and broad. It has sexy downlighters, tasteful art and a cocktail menu involving strong spirits and butch foraged things like gorse. There’s a deck overlooking the placid river and a menu headed by a declaration of intent. They are, they say, about zero waste and sustainability; about whole fish butchery, fermenting, smoking and generally sticking close to home. Once they’ve got the fillets, they use the rest for stocks and fish sausages and even fish-based charcuterie. All of which profound nerdiness is delightful but useless if the slogans don’t result in good things to eat. They do.
Some of them are very good indeed, and expressed via a profoundly Northern Irish commitment to portions that will get you through a hard winter, even if it’s spring. Here comes a deep-fried hake “Kiev”. It’s a golden-brown barrel-shaped piece of beautifully cooked white fish, the size of a one-person submarine. It’s filled with a wild garlic butter emulsion, the green of grass clippings, and comes with a properly sustaining pillow of mash, and shredded savoy cabbage pelted with crisp bacon lardons. Cut into the fish, and watch the dish self-sauce, until everything is lubricated with the finest garlic butter known to humanity.
They like their sauces at Lir. A monkfish sausage roll, the glossy puff pastry so exquisitely laminated you don’t know whether to eat it or put it on a plinth, comes with a thick fermented chilli ketchup with just the right bash of warming heat. A judicious spoonful of gochujang has been added to the mayo with the kimchi slaw that lies beneath a rustling pile of crispy squid. A slab of beef short rib has first been brined with spent coffee grounds, then slow-cooked for two days before being seared. It reads performatively, doesn’t it? Look at all the fiddly things we have done to this small rectangle of quality meat. But who doesn’t love a good story, when it produces something as delightfully tender and crisp as this? And of course, it comes with their own sauce, a brown one made with the deep caramel tones of a local IPA.
I could whinge about the mackerel caesar salad, because it’s a deconstruction. On one side is a slab of little gem, dribbled with something creamy and caesar-like. On the other is a sourdough crouton piled with shredded pieces of hot smoked mackerel and curls of parmesan. No, it isn’t a caesar. It’s various things that might be involved with a caesar. But if you put the title aside, it is a very good dish. The lettuce is sprinkled with cured and fried pieces of ling, playing the part of bacon lardons. The mackerel is oily, smoky and pleasingly intense.
The menu here changes daily. Tonight’s main courses include satiny pockets of well-made pasta filled with salt cod, in a classic butter sauce, and a sweet and nutty barley and wild mushroom risotto on a pea purée. It’s topped with a fist-sized piece of miso-glazed and roasted monkfish. It’s inventive and thoughtful stuff, without being annoyingly so. There are occasional missteps. A lobster béarnaise sauce served with a long-aged ex-dairy-cow sirloin sounds like a very good idea. It’s just overly acidic. Happily, it’s balanced out by a lovely little tartlet of caramelised onion in a cup of flaky pastry. We finish with a wobbly slice of miso caramel tart and a chocolate sponge ice-cream sandwich.
Faced by a menu of monkfish, mackerel, ling and so much else, even one which makes a point of using every part of the fish, questions of sustainability do have to be addressed. I am assured that, unlike some seafood places, at Lir they know which local boats the catch comes from and the skippers doing the catching. They know, too, which fishing grounds are sustainable and which species are thriving there. The fishmonger’s remains a part of the business, as is the streetfood offering, under the name Native Seafood & Scran. If you can’t get a table inside for the more intricate menu, come to the deck for squid bhajis and lobster sesame toast. In an area not renowned for its ambitious restaurant choices, this is one which deserves to thrive.
Also, if you happen to be nearby and in need of breakfast, head to the truly delightful Babushka café on the harbour at Portrush. They do a very strong line in smoky beans, with exceptional sausages and bacon from a local butcher. I dream still of their breakfast bun, filled with soy and gochujang-glazed crispy pork belly and red cabbage slaw. That will get you going the morning after.
News bites
Kino, the restaurant attached to the home of Opera North in Leeds, has appointed a new chef to replace the Middle Eastern MorMor, whose residency has come to an end. Josh Whitehead, a former Professional MasterChef semi-finalist, joins from the Coach and Horses in Harrogate. Until 11 June he is running a preview ‘Test Kitchen’ menu, with two courses for £24 and three for £29. It includes roast duck with braised endive, and popcorn polenta with grilled and tempura mushrooms and grilled onions. A full menu will then run from the end of June (kinoleeds.co.uk).
Carinito, a renowned Taco restaurant in Mexico City, is coming to London for a two-month residency from the end of May. The Carinito team will be in residence at the wine bar Oranj in Shoreditch, with a menu including guacamole with British brown shrimps, pulled pork belly with rice powder, chicharron and fresh mint, and confit cauliflower with citrus and fermented bean puree. Visit @oranj on Instagram for more.
With all the interest in new openings, it’s easy to forget the pioneers. Farewell then to one of them: the great Brian Stein, founder of the Maxwell’s Restaurant Group, who has died aged 79. At its peak in 2010, Maxwell’s, an American bar and grill, had outposts all over London and in Oxford and employed more than 400 people, though eventually fell victim to the pandemic. The original in Hampstead was the first restaurant I went to as a precocious teen, without parents in tow. The memory of it holds a rather special place in my overfed heart.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
