Belfast Restaurants

  1. Altos

    This popular, high-ceilinged bistro is decked out in giant, modern-art canvases and bright ochre and turquoise colours that match the Mediterranean influence on the menu, which includes a good selection of vegetarian dishes.

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  2. An Caife

    If you're exploring West Belfast, drop in to the café in this Irish language and arts centre for some good home-cooked food - the menu includes stews, soups, pizzas, cakes, scones and fresh pastries.

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  3. Ann's Pantry

    A tiny bakery with next-door coffee shop, Ann's serves superb home-made soups, pies (try the steak and Guinness), cakes and choose-your-own sandwiches to take away or sit in.

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  4. Archana

    A cosy and unpretentious Indian restaurant, Archana offers a good range of vegetarian dishes from its separate 'Little India' menu. The thali - a platter of three curries with rice, naan bread, pakora and dessert - is good value at around £13 / £9 for the meat/veggie version.

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  5. Beatrice Kennedy's

    This is where Queen's students take their parents for a smart dinner. It offers a candle-lit Edwardian drawing-room décor of burgundy, bottle green and bare red brick, with polished floorboards, starched white linen, and brown leather chairs, and a simple menu of superb cuisine, including home-made bread and ice cream. Enjoy dishes such as smoked trout and crab tart, and roast monkfish with butternut squash purée and fennel.

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  7. Bookfinders Cafe

    Part of the laudable trend to combine book-buying with eating, Bookfinders Cafe is found at the back of the stacks and serves up a menu of simple, tasty lunch dishes to a public ravening from the effort of tracking down Behan and Synge. It's well known for its repertoire of 40 soups, which are large on taste and small on price.

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  8. Café Conor

    Set in the glass-roofed former studio of William Conor, a Belfast artist, this is a laid-back bistro with a light and airy dining area dominated by a portrait of Conor himself. The menu offers a range of pastas, salads, burgers and stir fries, along with Irish favourites such as sausage and champ with onion gravy. The breakfast menu, which includes waffles with bacon and maple syrup, is served till noon on weekdays and till at weekends.

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  9. Café India

    A cut above your average curry house, Café India is a big, split-level barn of a place with a high, raftered ceiling and lots of varnished wood. The food is exceptionally good - we can recommend the palok chaat (spiced spinach and onion fritters) and chicken tikka achari zeera ( tandoori chicken in a tangy sauce flavoured with cumin and pickles).

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  10. Café Paul Rankin

    Owned by Northern Ireland's best-known celebrity chef, this café has comfy benches and sofas for lounging on, and serves quality coffee, cakes, focaccias, soups, pastas and salads.

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  11. Cayenne

    Behind an anonymous frosted-glass façade lurks a funky, award-winning restaurant operated by TV celebrity chef, Paul Rankin, decked out in designer black and amber and clad in conceptual art. The menu concentrates on quality Irish produce prepared with an Asian or Mediterranean twist.

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  13. Charlie's Gourmet Sandwich Bar

    Charlie's is good place for cheap, healthy and filling sandwiches, and also serves a range of breakfasts from toasted soda bread to the full Ulster fry.

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  14. Cutters River Grill

    One of the few bar-restaurants in Belfast with a waterside setting, Cutters has a terrace overlooking the River Lagan where you can enjoy lunch - try home-made lasagne or smoked chicken salad - while watching sculls and eights from the nearby rowing club messing about on the river.

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  15. Deane's at Queen's

    A chilled-out bar and grill from Belfast's top chef, Michael Deane, this place focuses on what could be described as good-value, gourmet pub grub, with a list of dishes that includes mussels in cider, leek and Gruyère tart, Lyonnaise sausage and mash with choucroute (shredded, pickled cabbage), and haddock and chips with mushy peas and dill tartare.

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  16. Deane's Restaurant

    Chef Michael Deane heads the kitchen in Northern Ireland's only Michelin-starred restaurant, where he takes the best of Irish and British produce - beef, game, lamb, seafood - and gives it the gourmet treatment. Typical dishes include pan-fried scallops with pickled carrots, watercress purée and orange vinaigrette, and rack of venison with baked potato purée, red cabbage marmalade and spiced pear confit .

    Read more about Deane's Restaurant

  17. Flour

    This funky little creperie tempts in hungry shoppers with a range of baguettes and sweet and savoury pancakes with healthy fillings such as olives, feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Home-made soups and freshly squeezed juices are also on the menu.

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  19. Ginger

    Ginger is one of those places you could walk right past without noticing, but if you do you'll be missing out. It's a cosy and informal little bistro with an unassuming exterior, serving food that is anything but ordinary - the flame-haired owner-chef (hence the name) really knows what he's doing.

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  20. Great Room

    Set in the former banking hall of the Ulster Bank head office, the Great Room is a jaw-dropping extravaganza of gilded stucco, red plush, white marble cherubs and a vast crystal chandelier glittering beneath a glass dome. The menu matches the décor, decadent but delicious, a French-influenced catalogue of political incorrectness laced with foie gras, veal, truffles and caviar.

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  21. Hill Street Brasserie

    In keeping with the design studios and art galleries that throng the nearby streets, this little brasserie is desperately trendy, from the slate and wood floor to the aubergine and olive colour scheme. Dinner is a bit overpriced, but the lunch menu is a bargain offering a choice of home-made burgers, risotto of the day, and a flavoursome and filling seafood chowder.

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  22. John Hewitt Bar & Restaurant

    Named for the Belfast poet and socialist, this is a modern pub with a traditional atmosphere and a well-earned reputation for excellent food. The menu changes weekly, but includes inventive dishes such as broccoli and Cashel blue cheese tart with sauté potatoes and dressed salad. It's also a great place for a drink and features live music, seven nights a week.

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  23. Maggie May's

    This is a homely little café with two rows of cosy wooden booths, colourful murals of old Belfast, and a host of hungover students wolfing down huge Ulster fries at lunchtime. The all-day breakfast menu runs from tea and toast to pancakes and maple syrup, while lunch can be soup and a sarnie or steak-and-Guinness pie; puddings include Dime Bar and sticky toffee. BYOB.

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  25. McHugh's Bar & Restaurant

    This restored pub has a traditional feel with its old wooden booths and benches, and boasts one of the city's best bar-restaurants, serving traditional pub grub downstairs (till ) and fancier dishes in the mezzanine restaurant upstairs (from ). The house speciality is oriental stir-fries.

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  26. Molly's Yard

    A restored Victorian stables courtyard is the setting for this superb restaurant, with a bar-bistro on the ground floor, outdoor tables in the yard and a rustic dining room in the airy roof space upstairs. The menu is seasonal and sticks to half a dozen each of starters and mains, ranging from gourmet confections and parmesan cream to hearty comfort food such as cottage pie. It also has its own microbrewery.

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  27. Morning Star

    This former coaching inn is famed for its all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. The upstairs restaurant features traditional Irish beef (big 700g steaks cost around £15 ), mussels, oysters and eels, as well as more unusual things like alligator and ostrich.

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  28. Mourne Seafood Bar

    This informal, publike space, all red brick and dark wood with old oil lamps dangling from the ceiling, is tucked behind a fishmonger's shop, so the seafood is as fresh as it gets. On the menu are oysters served au naturel or Rockefeller, meltingly sweet scallops with saffron linguini, salt and chilli squid, and roast gurnard with mustard and dill cream. Hugely popular, so best book ahead, especially on Sunday.

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  29. Nick's Warehouse

    Nick's is an enormous red-brick and blonde-wood wine bar and restaurant buzzing with happy drinkers and diners. The menu is strong on inventive seafood and veggie dishes, such as grilled swordfish on coconut rice with a pineapple, chilli, and sweetcorn relish, and spinach, red pepper and parmesan roulade with a tomato sauce and basil pesto.

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