BELFAST BRIEFING:The slowdown has already had a devastating impact on the city's culinary stars, writes FRANCESS McDONNELL.
NOTHING BETTER illustrates the bite of the bitter recession that is sweeping through Northern Ireland than the relative ease with which you can now book a table in any of Belfast’s top restaurants.
Credit-crunch lunches are now the order of the day in a city where tables in certain establishments were booked weeks in advance for important business events.
Before the harsh wind of the economic downturn swept through Belfast, the city was in danger of becoming a victim of its own success – as far as eating out was concerned. Regardless of the North’s current financial woes, Belfast had, in recent years, risen from the bottom of the league tables to join the list of the world’s top tourist destinations.
Last year, for example, travel guide Frommer's described the city as one of the top 12 destinations to visit in 2009.
Tourism is a vital money earner. Belfast city council estimates it delivers more than £285 million to the local economy each year.
The problem facing Belfast’s top chefs and restaurant owners now is twofold. First there are going to be significantly fewer tourists visiting the city and spending money. Secondly the North’s economy is in such dire straits that anecdotal evidence suggests local people are spending less on socialising than they did a year ago.
The economic slowdown has already had a devastating impact on one of Belfast’s best-known culinary stars. Paul Rankin, who was one of the North’s first celebrity chefs, has been forced to scale back his empire due to a combination of the downturn in the restaurant trade and what he has personally described as “mounting financial difficulties”.
In 1990 Paul Rankin became the first chef from the North to be awarded a Michelin star. Rankin and his wife Jeanne, who is a partner in the Rankin Group, operated Roscoff’s for eight years and then closed it and relaunched the restaurant as Cayenne, a more informal dining experience.
In the space of two decades, Rankin and his wife built what appeared to be an impressive business empire. Together with a team of investors, they opened a chain of Rankin Cafés across the North and a Roscoff Brasserie in Belfast city centre.
But the Rankin empire has been slowly crumbling over the last two years. Rankin Group has sold off its entire cafe chain and the brasserie and now just operates Cayenne, its original restaurant near what is a fading Golden Mile in Belfast. The heart of the city’s nightlife has moved downtown towards the emerging Cathedral Quarter and city centre.
It is more than a little ironic that the company that acquired Roscoff Brasserie from the Rankin Group – Barnside Trading Limited – also owns one of the city’s hottest new restaurants, 27 Talbot Street, in the Cathedral Quarter.
Jason Moore, joint head chef of 27 Talbot Street and now in charge of operations at Roscoff Brasserie, says the economic downturn in the North has had a big impact on local restaurants. “People still work hard and they still want to go out and enjoy good food but not as much as they may have done in the past.”
He believes restaurants across the board have to deliver “good value” in order to satisfy diners’ appetite in the current economic climate.
With unemployment on the rise and increasingly grim prospects for the short term, there may be few people in Northern Ireland who have the stomach to splash their hard-earned cash on eating out at this time.
But the potential culinary stars of the future believe here they may have the upper hand. For less than £7, diners can sample a two-course lunch in the fine surroundings of the Level Seven Restaurant at the Belfast Metropolitan College.
All dishes are expertly prepared by the next generation of potential Michelin-starred chefs in the North – and most important in the current economic gloom – it is licensed.
