Art Is An
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).
