Oliver’s,
405 Upper Newtownards Road,
Belfast,
BT4 3LH
028 9067 1105
Sometimes you want to be thrilled when you go to a restaurant, or you might want to be challenged. Other times you may want to be comforted, or maybe surprised.
But one way or another you want to be satisfied, that whatever you’ve gone looking for has been taken care of. That you’ve been taken care of.
Oliver’s opened on the fringes of bustling Ballyhackamore in east Belfast eight years ago, before the area turned into one of the city’s prime dining destinations.
But while some of the arrivals (and departures) have felt transitory and faddish, Oliver’s remains. Beyond its huge, covered outdoor space it’s still a cosy, welcoming spot, its exposed brick managing to feel homely rather than trendy.
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That’s helped by just-right service overseen by recently arrived general manager Michael Fletcher, while in the kitchen head chef Ivan Ionut’s menu has a reassuring solidity about it. Taken together it all tells you you’re in a neighbourhood bistro that’s going to take care of you but, if needs be, get a little fancy while doing it.
There’s soup, and mussels in white wine, fishcakes, and a tomato salad. Among the mains there’s steak, a burger, fish and chips and a ‘pasta of the week’.
But then there’s a special of half-a-dozen Strangford oysters, with pickled cucumber and soy, for a tenner. Picking the right things and doing them well is right at the top of the agenda at Oliver’s.
The tomato salad is wedges, chunks and slabs of full-flavoured heritage varieties, with blobs of oozing burrata, curls of spiky pickled shallot, dollops of a pungent pesto and a scatter of fried breadcrumbs.
It may be the depths of autumn (at best) outside but there’s a bright Mediterranean season about the plate, as there is in little cushions of gnocchi, albeit slouching towards the comfort required here at this time of year, with the crisp-edged dumplings sitting on a deeply rich tomato sauce with a broken window’s worth of parmesan shards strewn across the top.
The main courses go all in on the comfort, and not just because both look like you could rest your head on them and take a nap.
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Two generous fillets of golden-fringed seabass flake apart under their crisp skin. There’s a couple of whopping fishcakes, heaving with haddock among the soft mash inside their crumb.
Prawns bob among the slick of butter sauce with little bursts of zippiness from sweet cherry peppers and the briny freshness of sea herbs.
The featherblade is a glistening, squat Martello tower of beef that falls apart, with the gentle prompting of a fork, into a sticky, deep pool of satisfaction. It comes lubricated by a good red wine sauce and accompanied by cabbage and a shimmering potato pave, the slices pressed together into a block that’s been fried to a satisfying crunch.
The garlic chips were a folly but a tasty one. Both main courses, as they should at £21 for the fish and £24 for the beef, didn’t need any augmentation, and quality and quantity were in lock-step.
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Similarly for dessert, the excellent example of a brownie was a size of the doorstep, while the lemon tart, with a simple but highly effective layer of sharp blackberries between the citrus filling and the meringue top, was a textbook example of neither a slice nor a wedge but a wodge.
If the well put together cocktail menu grabs you, try a Jungle Bird – a smashing bittersweet combination of rum, Campari, pineapple and lime. That will certainly take care of you, along with the rest of the Oliver’s experience.
The bill
- Gnocchi £7.50
- Tomato salad £7.50
- Seabass £21
- Featherblade of beef £24
- Garlic chips £5
- Chocolate brownie £6.50
- Lemon tart £7.50
- Non-alcoholic Bramble £6
- Jungle Bird cocktail £9
Total £94
