The Best Restaurants in Belfast

One of several Belfast restaurants awarded a Bib Gourmand for their affordable, high-quality cooking, Beau is a well-run, lively and relaxed spot where the welcoming team will quickly put a smile on your face. The cooking is best enjoyed in a group, sharing as many dishes as you can so that you get to taste the full breadth of the kitchen’s talents. The menu changes regularly, but you can expect ingredient-led, cleanly executed dishes along the lines of butter-poached halibut with lobster cream or confit globe artichoke with romesco. The same owners also operate fellow Bib Gourmand EDŌ.

The gastronomic landscape of Belfast owes a great debt to Chef Michael Deane. His numerous restaurants over the years have offered something for every taste and a variety of budgets. This is one of his simpler offerings, which delivers consistently enjoyable food with an appealing price tag. Located, as the name suggests, by Queen’s University Belfast, it's a spacious yet bustling modern brasserie offering refined dishes and big flavours. Meats cooked in the Mibrasa charcoal oven are a feature of the menu, but it may well be dessert that sticks in your memory. If panna cotta is on the menu, be sure to go for it.

You’re spoilt for choice at this smart and trendy brasserie, whose name translates as ‘I eat’. The cooking is internationally influenced, but Spain reigns supreme with the likes of paella, patatas bravas and pil pil prawns all making an appearance. Many dishes also come from the Bertha oven, where they are cooked over apple or pear wood. The fun doesn’t stop at the food, with cocktails aplenty complementing a range of tequilas and a sensibly priced wine list. Warm and welcoming service helps to contribute to a lively buzz that's best enjoyed from the long kitchen counter.

Just round the corner from EDŌ, this upbeat restaurant benefits from a smiling team who provide a wonderfully warm welcome. The cheery feel is enhanced by a plethora of foliage decorating the room, along with work from local artists and a good buzz to the atmosphere. The cooking itself has a rustic edge and delivers bags of flavour thanks to the well-sourced ingredients. The extensive menus not only offer plenty of choice but also cater well for a range of diners, with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options available.

A restaurant from Michael Deane might as well be called ‘mrBelfast’ as ‘mrDeanes’, such is the culinary influence he has exerted over the city. The space that was once Deanes Love Fish and his flagship Eipic, has now been converted into this thriving ‘Bistro, Bar and Social’ where the atmosphere is lively, the flavours are big and the prices are generous. Look out for the carefully executed takes on international dishes in particular, be they from France or Thailand.

Stephen Toman worked with some of the best chefs in France before returning home to Belfast and opening what is now one of its finest restaurants. Having held a MICHELIN Star for a decade, OX is a stone’s throw from the River Lagan and offers an understated yet wholly enjoyable experience. Toman's cooking balances flavours and textures perfectly, and his dishes are often more complex than they initially appear. Vegetables, in particular, are treated with great respect. The adjoining OX Cave is an ideal place to enjoy a glass of wine chosen by sommelier and restaurant manager Alain Kerloc’h, who the chef met during his travels in France.

Another of Belfast’s Starred restaurants, The Muddlers Club is named after the secret society that used to meet here in the back streets of the city’s Cathedral Quarter over 200 years ago. One wonders what they would make of the place now, with its industrial style and skull-based décor. You can bet they’d appreciate the food though. Chef Gareth McCaughey’s cooking champions quality local produce and doesn’t overcomplicate things in unfussy, honest and hearty dishes. Your dessert may well be the highlight, which is no surprise given McCaughey started out as a pastry chef.

Staying the night? The Merchant Hotel is just a few steps away.