Happy St Patrick's Day! Irish chef Paul Rankin offers his guide to visiting Belfast

By Helen Nicholson

A pint of the black stuff? The Northern Irish capital has seen tough times but Belfast has to plenty to offer weekenders...


If you’re Irish and you’re a top chef it's likely that you'll spend more time in the kitchen on St Patrick’s Day than you will getting reacquainted with a pint of Guinness. This year is no exception for celebrity chef Paul Rankin who will be rustling up an Irish stew live on air in the GMTV studios in London.

Luckily, the breakfast show goes off air at 9.25am which leaves Rankin plenty of time to get cleaned up and head down to Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill, run by fellow Irish chef Richard Corrigan, to enjoy some quality Irish fare. “Hopefully the party will go on from there”, he says

So, early-morning shows aside, how would he usually celebrate St Patrick’s Day?

“If I’m celebrating back at home in Belfast it will probably start out with lunch at a pub, and then you’re into the black stuff and the whiskies until the wee hours of the morning. The Crown is a great place to get a pint of Guinness, as is Davy Byrnes, The John Hewitt Bar and the Duke of York.

“Belfast’s St Patrick’s Day parade is still quite small. When I was growing up we didn’t really celebrate it that much in the north because of all the tensions but it’s building all the time and the parade is becoming more like the Dublin parade. One of the signs of positive change is that we can celebrate St Patrick’s with freedom and both sides can get together and have a party.”

Rankin’s job has taken him all over the world and offered him plenty of opportunities to see how other countries paint the town green. “I used to go to the States a lot which is amazing because they really go bananas in New York. I went on the Ellen de Generes show in LA which was a bit rock and roll. I was picked up by a limousine and taken to these big Hollywood-style studios to talk about Irish stew. I showed her how to make an Irish coffee, it was a hoot.”


Left: Belfast has a lively bar scene. Right: Paul Rankin has brought gastronomic excellence to the city

Canada, Australia and India have also provided memorable nights out. “They don’t really celebrate St Patrick’s Day in India of course” says Rankin, “but it’s another excuse for a party. If people can find an Irishman on St Patrick’s Day it’s an excuse to go out so I become very popular on 17th March!”

Rankin trained at the Roux brothers’ London restaurant Le Gavroche in the early 1980s before setting off on his travels with wife Jeanne. After a spell working in Canada the pair returned to Belfast to set up their restaurant Roscoff in 1984, which won Northern Ireland’s first Michelin star. The restaurant closed several years ago but the couple now run Cayenne.

“Roscoff was really the first proper restaurant in Belfast. It gave people an excuse to come back to the city - to forget about the Troubles and feel like they could be dining in London or New York,” Rankin explains.


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“Friends and acquaintances have told me: ‘Paul, you were part of the peace process because you gave people a reason and confidence to come back to Belfast.’ Roscoff was a place you could take visitors and say ‘this is the new Belfast’.”

As with bars, Rankin has a long list of restaurant recommendations, including the Mourne Seafood Bar, run by his former employee Andy Rae (“It serves great local seafood – it’s the place to go for oysters.”), Deanes (which also has a Michelin star), Shu, Nick’s Warehouse and The Ginger Bistro.

“Belfast is a great town to stay in because there are so many good pubs and restaurants to go to,” Rankin says. “From a food point of view it’s probably the best provincial city in the UK. Edinburgh is its only rival.”

And where would he stay if he was a tourist in the city? “It’s nice to find somewhere with a bit of personality - top of the list would be The Merchant. Malmaison is also good because it’s in a lovely old building and The Fitzwilliam is one of the nice, bright, modern hotels.”

Rankin is very proud to be Irish and professes to being a “huge fan” of the country, particularly his hometown, so he makes an enthusiastic tour guide.


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“One of the great things to do is to take a black taxi tour – they take you around some of the old trouble spots and show you some of those big scary murals. It shows you a little bit of the history of the war torn Belfast which is a nice contrast to see because it doesn’t feel like a place that could have been at war at all now. We don’t celebrate it as such but it’s still part of who we are and I can totally understand from an outsider’s point of view how interesting it is.”

“If you hire a car on your visit you can be at the sea in 15 or 20 minutes and you can be at the north coast in just over an hour so Belfast is a great base for day trips and walks. The Giant’s Causeway is of course a must-see and it’s only an hour and a quarter’s drive from Belfast.”When he gets a chance to take time off Rankin heads to either Greece or India in search of some rest and recuperation and, in particular, yoga.

“A chef’s life is so mad and I end up travelling quite a bit so when I go on holiday I like to do the battery charging thing and I like to be kind to my body and soul,” he explains. “The places that I go are world-class yoga meccas – I visit Yoga Plus in Crete and Purple Valley in Goa. They’re both fantastic. You’d expect to feel chilled out but most times I come back full of beans, almost bouncing off the walls. I come back feeling bright and shiny and new.”


A5WPCM Merchant Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland

And is Belfast his permanent home now? “I don’t know, I’m getting too old to cook every day. I think if I do anything else it will be something to do with yoga or a cookery school. Or something to do with the arts maybe? I like the idea of doing something connected with painting, writing or music.” And what would happened to Cayenne? “I’d have to get a cardboard cut-out of myself to put at the front door and in the kitchen. Or maybe I could keep my eye on everyone via a webcam? If only I could figure out how to work it…”

To find out more about visiting Northern Ireland, visit www.discoverireland.com. To find out more about Cayenne visit www.cayenne-restaurant.co.uk


source: dailymail