The earthen banks outside Capparelli at the Mill look like they’ve been styled by nature’s PR team – a sweep of wild yellow flowers that glow even on a grey day. It’s the view from the diningroom upstairs, where light floods through floor-to-ceiling glass. Honey-coloured stone underfoot, a vaulted ceiling with an atrium and timber slats softening the acoustics. A terracotta-hued banquette runs down the centre, cleanly dividing the room. Below, a cafe hums on the ground floor; up here, the glass walls seem to breathe with the landscape.
Carlos and Lucie Capparelli opened their restaurant, cafe and deli in Dundonald, outside Belfast, at the end of the summer. It was a huge undertaking – a 300-year-old listed water mill that hadn’t been used since 2020 – and took two years to restore. They heard through a friend it was up for lease and visited that July, coming from London with their newborn daughter. By early 2021 they were back in Lucie’s home city, building their Capparelli pasta brand while planning the restaurant.
As their vision began to take shape, a serious investor came on board: Yotam Ottolenghi. Carlos had spent nine years working for the famed chef in London, rising through the Ottolenghi group to become head chef at Nopi, then executive chef across the business.
Ottolenghi spends much of his time in the North and has been closely involved, visiting through the build and staying in frequent contact with Carlos. Together they’ve built a restaurant that looks effortless – 10 chefs in the kitchen, a Japanese konro grill for steaks, a French rotisserie for the chicken and a pasta extruder that runs daily.
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The menu – divided into snacks, small plates, and sharing mains – reflects Carlos’s background as a Brazilian with Italian roots; so you’ll find burrata, chicken Milanese, pasta and rotisserie dishes. But it leans eastward too, with pomegranate, tahini, zhoug, chimichurri, za’atar and pickled courgette. You know within the first few bites of the aubergine (£9) – roasted until the skin and flesh are rich and savoury, brightened by the lactic hit of feta yoghurt and sweet studs of pomegranate seeds – that a Levantine larder runs quietly through the cooking.
The same clarity of flavour runs through the pasta. The casarecce alla Norma (£16.50), a bowl of ridged noodles clinging to a sauce of tomato, smoked aubergine and paprika, is smoky and balanced, the sauce cooked down to a point just before collapse. A drift of grated Auricchio ricotta adds a salty hit.
The beef shin ragù (£17.50), moves in a different register: deep, slow, 12 hours of patience. Rigatoni cooked perfectly – no softness, no collapse – holding a sauce that tastes of red wine and time. You could call it rustic, but that would miss the detail. Every mouthful feels engineered to taste like less work than it was. Nothing over-reduced, nothing cloudy. Just flavour and restraint.
The rotisserie chicken shawarma (£19.50) comes as a half-bird portion – the skin taut and crisp, the meat soft, the spicing a mix of turmeric, cumin, sumac, smoked paprika, oregano and cinnamon. (Yes, I checked that one with them – I knew there’d be a list.) A sharp, herbaceous sauce on top brings a hit of acidity, the richness returning in a wonderful jus that’s perfect for dipping the triple-cooked frites (£5). Do order the frites.
As it’s a round-trip and we’ll be heading back home to Dublin, it’s just a glass of the house red for us – a Borsao garnacha (£8) – and an All About lemon and ginger kombucha (£3.50) brewed by a small company in Galway. The wine list is constructed to go with the food rather than engineered to trigger a natural wine stampede. Reds run from light and fruit-driven to darker and more structured; whites from crisp to full and mineral, most bottles sitting between £30 and £60, a few stretching higher.
The pavlova with roasted figs and plums (£7.50) looks immaculate, but is too sweet and soft – as if made with icing sugar rather than castor – and it overshadows the fig leaf custard. The apricot and rosemary polenta cake (£6) is more assured – dense, coarse, bright with fruit and sour crème fraîche. Perfect with tea for two (£6).
There’s a rigour to the kitchen at Capparelli at the Mill, a calm exactness that makes flavours as vivid as the meadow outside – bright, layered, alive. If it was in Dublin, it would be booked solid and talked about for months. Judging by the full room, it already is in north Co Down.
Dinner for two with a glass of wine, kombucha and tea was £98.50 (about €116).
The verdict: I wish this restaurant was in Dublin.
Food provenance: Meat and free-range chicken from Lisdergan; vegetables, La Rousse and Picked Organic.
Vegetarian options: Roast aubergine with feta; charred beetroot with tomato; burrata; and cauliflower shawarma.
Wheelchair access: Fully accessible with an accessible toilet.
Music: Modern soul and jazz mix.
