Strength and Honour
We’re talking lunch and dinner in the same restaurant but not on the same day. Four flights; two meals. Throw in a couple of winter storms and it’s all about dedication to the cause. Ox is one of three restaurants in Northern Ireland’s capital to be sprinkled with Michelin stardust. Just in case you didn’t get the memo, a mini Michelin man patrols the drinks trolley beside the entrance door.
The menu (printed on recycled crispy brown paper which looks good enough to eat) reads: “Ox is committed to developing close relationships with local suppliers; menus are created around the best available seasonal produce. As a result, each dish leaving the kitchen is thoughtfully designed so every element on the plate has an integral role in showcasing winter’s larder.” What’s in this season’s larder then? It’s well filled to include: Black Garlic | Blood Orange | Butternut Squash | Cabbage | Carrot | Celeriac | Celery | Chestnut | Chocolate| Coconut | Curry | Fig | Golden Beetroot | Halibut | Jasmin| Jerusalem Artichoke | Mustard | Onion | Passion Fruit | Pine Nut | Prawn | Rhubarb | Salsify | Truffle.
And what about winter cocktails? Exiles + Elderflower (Exiles, St Germain, Killahora apple, lemon juice) and Symphonie of Apples (Symphonia No.2 Apple Gin, Drambuie, lemon, sparkling apple) are two that jump off the drinks menu. “Winter Wines from Interesting Places” include Cypriot and Hungarian elixirs. The Irish theme comes into its own with gin and soft drinks. Images of rambling country houses are conjured up by Bertha’s Revenge of Ballyvolane House in County Cork and Shortcross from Rademon Estate, County Down. Equally evocative are Kombucha from The Bucha’s Dog in County Antrim and Poacher’s Wild Elderflower Tonic Water from County Wicklow. As for the winter tasting menu with matching wines dinner:
- Fig, Earl Grey canapés
- Gougère, Coolattin cheddar, beer
- Sourdough, Cuinneog butter
- Celeriac velouté, chestnut, truffle
- (Furmint 2017, Pajzos Tokaj, Hungary)
- Salt baked beetroot, pine nut, St Tola
- (Blanc de Blanc, Château Ksara 2018, Lebanon)
- Halibut, butternut squash, burned lemon, curry
- (Villa Blanche 2018, Calmel + Joseph, Languedoc, France)
- Sprouting broccoli, salsify, persillade
- (Pasas Jumilla 2017, Monastrell, Spain)
- Baked brown sugar, coconut, ginger
- Chocolate, blood orange, Jerusalem artichoke ice cream
- (Cabidos 2012, Petit Manseng, France)
- Passionfruit, sablé, miso caramel petit fours
There are lots of Michelin signifiers: a generous staff to customer ratio; industrious napkin folding; coloured and crackled textured plates; heavy cutlery; amuse gueules intervals; sweet versus savoury surprises; and foam. And course after course of course of edible art. The menu is honest and concise. It knows what it’s doing and what it’s using to do what it’s doing. Lunch highlights include lightly toasted soda bread (the recycled crispy brown paper making another appearance), cheese dill cappuccino with purple beetroot and passionfruit sorbet with salt caramel. Sommelier recommended accompanying wines range from lemonish Japanese Grace to full bodied French Viognier.
The interior is as now as the menu. Both Ox and its neighbour, the bar Ox Cave, have a stripped back industrial aesthetic. There’s a strong sense of materiality from the exposed pipes and brick walls to the tiles (gunpowder grey in Ox; duck egg blue in Ox Cave) and timber floors. Art is reserved for the customers’ fashion plates. It’s a no nonsense approach that suits Belfast. The interiors are by Oscar and Oscar. Established in 2011 by Martin Barrett and Orla Maguire, Oscar and Oscar is an interior design and architecture studio based in Belfast. “We’re very proud of Ox and Ox Cave,” says Orla. “We have been lucky to work with some extremely talented clients.”
Martin explains, “Ox dining room is designed to be a relatively mute backdrop to the cooking of co-owner and Chef Stephen Toman. That being the case, it needed to be as characterful and complementary as the crockery that would contain the food itself. The character contains a palette of materials, warm and rich and confident in its simplicity. The space itself strikes a confident note by making both the kitchen and the city view the centre of attention. The dining room, as the space between these resonating notes, holds this tension and blends it in a delicate and respectful balance.”
“Ox Cave provides the space for Ox to let its hair down,” notes Orla, “and is an informal setting for wines carefully selected by co-owner Alain Kerloc’h to be enjoyed without self consciousness and pretence. Ox Cave can be enjoyed either after dinner or as an evening out in its own right. It is the more extrovert of the pair of spaces yet is both warm and totally unpretentious. Ox Cave is Belfast’s nod to the Parisian ‘zinc bar’.” Orla finishes, “Deep rooted in our values is the belief that good design can make us all a little happier.” We’re more than a little happy to lunch and dine at Ox with postprandial sipping in Ox Cave.
Cathedral Quarter: a place of short skirts and long nights. Ever since Wallpaper* Style Guides were invented, cities have been reinvented as collections of legible quarters and not necessarily four of them either. According to Wallpaper* Belfast’s three quarters – alongside the districts of Shankill, Falls, Ormeau, East and Central – are Queen’s Quarter (for studying humanities), Titanic Quarter (for studying a human disaster) and Cathedral Quarter (for studying humanity). Queen’s is just called Queen’s by locals but the Quarter moniker has stuck to Titanic and Cathedral.
Definite articled hostelries – The Cloth Ear, The Dirty Onion, The Spaniard, The Thirsty Goat – line the cobbled laneways of this historic ‘hood. And so does one of the city’s or rather country’s best restaurants. Down a New York type alley lined with street art and scenes of the lives of national heroes like Henry Joy McCracken and Wolfe Tone hides The Muddlers Club. The 40 metre high slimline steel spire of St Anne’s Cathedral pierces the slit of sky visible above the entrance to this Michelin starred restaurant.
Saturday evenings are all about the tasting menu at Muddlers. Make that tasting with matching wines. It’s both local and international: eel from Lough Neagh up the road; wine from Syria across the world. All eight exquisite courses are beautifully choreographed by the waiting staff. An open kitchen along one wall and a bar along another adds to the conviviality. The interior is as industrial as the approach to the restaurant and suitably dark: Chef Gareth McCaughey named his restaurant after a secret society that met on this site two centuries ago. The architects were Oscar + Oscar who designed another of Belfast’s Michelin star holders, Ox. It’s more than a meal, it’s an event: The Muddlers Club doesn’t do things by two quarters (halves).
