Culinary Belfast

Lovely city and not (yet) slick. Belfast is an exciting place that doesn't get bored easily and is booming. The culinary scene also notices this, which has made huge leaps in recent years. Time to visit this Northern Irish city! TEXT KATJA BROKKE, PHOTOGRAPHY KATJA BROKKE, TOURISM NI, OX

It is hot in the taxi. Occasionally I nod glazily yes. Walter Windrum, my taxi driver and guide, keeps on talking in an unadulterated Northern Irish accent. In every district of Belfast, he has a story ready, which he has clearly told hundreds of times. Walter is a seasoned Irishman and has been guiding people around his beloved city since 1995. Sometimes he is hard to understand, but his rattling is so charming that I don't want to ask him to continue in proper English. That would be a waste and besides, I get enough information.

The wall splitting Belfast West down the middle
Northern Ireland has been part of the United Kingdom as a constituent country since 1922, although it has not always been united. This is well reflected in Belfast West, where Walter takes me. This is the neighbourhood where the 30-year civil war, also known as The Troubles, took place, among other things, and it has left its mark. The neighbourhood is still split in two by a wall to separate the Irish-oriented Catholics and the UK-oriented Protestants. In the Catholic quarter, all nameplates are bilingual (Irish and British) and murals show support for the IRA - the Irish Republican Army - which wanted independence from the UK and sought a united Ireland. On the other side of the wall, in the Protestant neighbourhood, I see many murals commemorating the very victims of the IRA. In some places there are gates in the wall so there is some freedom of movement from one side to the other, but those gates close every night at 10pm. The hostility is still there. And this is despite the fact that on 28 July 2005, the Army Council, the IRA's highest governing body, ordered its members to end the armed struggle once and for all. The organisation did so in a televised statement. On that day, UK soldiers also disappeared from the streets and things are relatively calm in Belfast. Slowly things are moving in the right direction. The Belfastians I speak to condemn the division, especially the young have little use for it. In the process, it has been agreed that Northern Ireland can choose to split from the UK by referendum at any time. And with the number of Protestants dwindling, Catholics are getting more of a vote. It could just be that that breakaway is getting closer and closer, especially with brexit around the corner.

St George's Market
After the brief history lesson, Walter and I leave west and drive through the rest of the city. Past Harland and Wolff, the shipyard where they built the Titanic, past the free botanical gardens in the Queens district, and past murals showing Northern Ireland's sympathy for independence fighters worldwide. While I could spend a whole story on the eventful history and current developments of the country and its capital, I am not here for politics and industry, but for fine food, cheesemakers, wine, restaurants and fishermen. I am here to explore culinary Belfast and its environs, and to do so I start in the city centre, at St George's Market. This is one of the oldest covered markets in the UK, built between 1890 and 1896. On Friday mornings, locals can come here for fresh fish and vegetables; on Saturdays and Sundays, there is room for more relaxation and stalls selling jewellery, antiques, clothes and lots of food. This is highly recommended if you like market stalls, and if you are still not full from a visit to the market, you can always go to restaurant and bar Stock which is in the same building and overlooks the shopping crowd. They are best known for their Stock Breakfast, for those hearty appetites after a night of heavy drinking.

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Read the whole article in WINELIFE #65. You can order here.