It isn't easy to please 14 people at the same time but a group of us left Cayenne, the Rankins' newish restaurant in the old Roscoffs premises in Belfast, stunned by how good and generous the food had been. This is a brazenly stylish restaurant where the staff are razor-sharp and not remotely obsequious. There's no dome-lifting or crumb-brushing or "madam" this and that, but they serve fabulous food with tremendous efficiency in an interesting, if rather peculiar, setting.
Coming from Dublin, where the best restaurants tend to be formal to the point of stuffiness, we found Cayenne refreshingly brash and edgy. You could get away with wearing your good jeans here and a clean T-shirt - so long as both are tight enough. If you're starting from the south, this is the ultimate long lunch. We caught the 11 a.m. Enterprise train and were sitting at the table by 1.15 p.m., with the whole afternoon before us until the 6.10 p.m. return train. We had had a few bottles of champagne on the way, and we tripped off the train and into taxis ready to admire everything around us. And indeed Belfast looked great in the sunshine, with spanking new buildings and masses of cranes on the horizon.
From the outside, Cayenne looks dead. The wide windows are sandblasted with random, unformed words picked out in clear glass, a theme continued inside, where the walls are decorated with sunken snatches of words, carved out - or should I say installed? - by Belfast artist Peter B.J. Anderson. These may look like random words - the sort of nonsense you get woven into the upholstery on Aer Lingus - but in fact they are bits of Ulster surnames and placenames, and even fragments of computer language . . . but that's all a bit deep if all you are looking for is a decent meal. Words apart, it is a dark, moody place with 1970s-style pendant lights with orange shades casting a dim, night-clubby glow.
Very much in nightclub mode herself was Jeanne Rankin, looking incredible in skin-tight black trousers - leather or satin, we're still debating - and a clinging sequinned top with "New York" scribbled across it. What a change from all that long hair and starched whites on the TV series. She is so amazingly thin it is hard to believe she has anything to do with food at all - least of all with the huge baskets of fresh, fluffy bread she carried to our tables. It comes from the Rankins' bakery elsewhere in the city.
Despite all the glitzy decorative tricks - such as ceiling lights that grow progressively more red as the decibel-level rises - the tables were traditionally laid with heavy, spotless damask cloths and napkins. Each has a centrepiece of bog oak: ours looked like a petrified chicken carcass but in any case was whipped away quickly.
The menu is good and long, though those in a hurry are advised to stick to the £14.50 setmenu of three swift courses. We wandered into the a la carte section fairly quickly. I won't bore you with every single dish - we were a big group - just those that stood out. The starters were stunning, particularly a dish of crispy prawns that arrived heaped to form a delectable mountain. I know places where if you ordered this dish you might get four or five mouthfuls at the most, but here you get plenty and they were divinely crisp. My Chargrilled Asparagus and Mushroom with Parmesan was the least exciting and, unlike everything else, was something one could do better at home. The asparagus was just a bit too al dente, and there was too little moisture on the plate to allow much mopping up with bread. However, it was a healthy, holding-back sort of thing, which I chose because I was going on to have calves' liver with lots of trimmings.
Elaine's Curried Chicken Spring Rolls came with a Lime and Mango Salsa. Sounds boring, doesn't it? But it arrived on a smart, triangular, white plate, cut asymmetrically, with one section standing up so that the whole thing looked like an architectural model rather than a £5.50 starter.
Wok-smoked Salmon on a Corn and Scallion Pancake, Goat's Cheese and Ratatouille Puff Pizza, and Seafood Ceviche were all tried and declared gorgeous but best pleased of all was Mary, who has to have lobster when she dines out and found it here as a starter tossed about with penne pasta in a tomato and summer-herbs sauce.
We were seated at two tables - they do this for groups over eight and there was no budging them on it - and the other table was served well ahead of ours. This was slightly annoying - but then, those at our table were more comfortable. The others had to put up with freezing blasts of air-conditioning.
The seared calves' liver was remarkably tender but there was kick to it in the peppered crust, and crispy onions served on a bed of richly-flavoured lentils. Baked turbot, steamed salmon served with ribbons of vegetables, Asian Peppered Rump of Lamb, Soy Glazed Breast of Duck with Sweet Potato Pancake, and Seafood with a Hot Curry and Coconut Cream Sauce were all devoured with glee. No one was happier, though, than Peter to my right, who avoided all the fussy fusion food and ordered a fine, big ribeye steak with chips.
Asian greens, noodles, chips and salads, we had the lot and there was plenty to go around. The tradition of the big Ulster plateful lives on here, despite the minimalist decor.
Desserts, too, came in lavish portions. Home-made vanilla ice cream was crammed in big scoops into a sundae glass, with jugs of caramel or chocolate sauce on the side, while a Cayenne speciality, honeycomb ice-cream, was served with poppyseed shortbread and strawberries. A superb warm, soft, chocolate cake came with a belt-busting combination of bourbon ice-cream and chocolate sauce, while an individual dish of warm apple-and-plum crumble with toffee ice-cream on the side was enough to feed two. All desserts were £4 each, as was a cheeseplate big enough to go around the table twice, and cappuccinos to follow were predictably perfect with froth stiff enough to trot an ass over and real chocolate shavings on top.
A moderate lunch here would have cost under £30 a head, but we ended up paying twice that, I'm afraid to say.
Cayenne, 7 Lesley House, Shaftesbury Square, Belfast BT2 7DB. Tel 048 903 31532
Orna Mulcahy can be contacted at omulcahy@irish-times.ie
