The recipe for a good cafe-bar experience is really very simple: delicious food, tasty cocktails and smart design. Muriel's Cafe Bar, recently opened on Church Lane in Belfast, scores well on all three. It may only be the size of a shoe-box - or should that be a hat-box, since Muriel, the eponymous former resident, was a milliner by trade - but locals seem content to squeeze themselves into all the candlelit nooks and crannies of the velvety interior.
Favourites include the salt and pepper chicken with chimichurri sauce, and the house cocktail, Milliner's Mix, an addictively fruity creation served (who knows why?) in a jam jar. Cheese and meat platters are available until midnight, a welcome move in a city centre still inclined to fall asleep before bedtime. Thursday night is swing night, with music and a resident instructor (and sometimes even dancing in the street). While millinery was Muriel's day-job, the story goes that by night she was a madam, and the upper floor of the bar is decked out in suitably opulent boudoir fashion. Yes, it's more bijou Paris salon than Belfast docks brothel, but we're not complaining.
Muriel's Cafe Bar, 12-14 Church Lane, off High Street, 048-90332445.