44 Hill Street — Restaurant in Belfast

I - The place

A French & Mediterranean bar + restaurant that didn't leave us impressed.

II - The Food and mood

The first thing that were were surprised by when we entered was how packed the place was. Particularly during these times, I would have expected more distancing, particularly for our table which was VERY close to other guests (near the kitchen).

The staff was pleasant, but for many weren't wearing masks. The chefs were also not wearing any protections (and were pretty loud, particularly when you understand French), which was surprising when you see so many other places going really far to protect people.

Beyond that first impression that wasn't ideal, we were still curious about the menu that had some interesting offerings (despite having a fair amount of typos, strange for seemingly French owners). We started by the crispy duck and the goat cheese balls, which were decent but not particularly striking - too much sauce with the otherwise interesting duck, and the cheese balls were OK despite the interesting honey. We then followed by the gnocchis and a lamb special of the day. While the lamb was interesting, with a very nice mash and sauce, the gnocchis were a catastrophe. I had read fairly bad comments about them online, but my partner needed something vegetarian and that was the only main option (if I remember well). While the comments were mostly pointing out the quantity, I was mostly shocked by the quality - dry, chewy, a real disappointment not elevated by the surrounding ingredients. The vegs coming with the lamb, on the side, were of good quality but not cooked enough and drowning in butter.

Overall, if felt a bit of a shame as you can see there is a will to try things differently, but some points are just not acceptable for the price demanded. Hopefully there was the Eat out to help out discount leaving us with a bill around £50, but for £70 I would have been fairly bothered.

III - Anything special?

No.

IV - Verdict

All I want is to support restaurants, particularly during these hard times, but one cannot serve gnocchis like this, and especially not for £16. I still give 3* for the staff (that should be protected!), and some...

Went daytime Saturday. Absolutely zero atmosphere and that's probably mostly to do with the fact that your ordering is done by scanning a code. What's the reason for that? My friend was celiac and the on-screen version of the menu doesn't show what is gluten free so had to go find the one person who seemed to be front of house and get an actual physical menu. I mean why not just provide a menu? It felt like how a greasy spoon café that just wants you to eat and leave asap. No interaction with staff although the one guy who appeared to be working alone was very friendly. We like to eat out for the experience, a bit like going to the cinema instead of watching Netflix but this was unpleasant. A really cold experience with disappointing food. We chose a selection of starters and share plates. One of the plates was focaccia bread with hummus and tapenade or similar (can't recall). The bread must have been taken out of the fridge because it was cold cold. I was expecting it to be warm or at least room temperature. Focaccia was not nice at all, it had no flavour but worse than that it was starting to harden like left-out sandwiches! We were starving and didn't have the energy to start complaining so ate half of it (the soft bits). The tortillas with dips were...unusual. I don't recall it saying on the menu they would be black but indeed they were, not sure why. A fair amount were chewy and not crispy as expected so we only ate half of that too. The fat on the pork belly made my friend gag but maybe that comes with the territory, I'm vegetarian. Overall opinion - we were initially excited with the great gluten free and vegan/vegetarian selection but seriously disappointed in the end. Understaffed, bizarre order system using your phone like in a busy night club, zero atmosphere because there's no staff to interact with, food a really disappointing. We left the second we were done, no point enjoying another drink in a waiting room! On the plus side, the prices for city centre were good and we ate...

Avoid this place.

My husband and brother went to find somewhere to eat for 9 people ( 2 elderly, 2 kids and 5 adults) as it was absolutely chaotic in Belfast with the market and xmas being around the corner. This was the only place they could find.

Upon getting there, I find that they placed us around the front area with the higher seats. With 2 elderly with a walking stick and 2 kids with us I know they’d struggle to get up on them. So I requested to have a normal lower table and seats. The waiter was kind enough and straight away got the manager, however the manager was very dismissive and asked me where my husband and my brother was who he spoke to him earlier on, and that all the available tables at the back were booked and waiting for people. He then proceeds to ignore me and went on the till to do his own thing. The whole time we were there, only a few tables got filled and the back stayed empty.

Food wasn’t that great. Not going to come back.

In response to the owners comment/reply to this review, I would like to clarify that We were simply told there were seats available. As we seen there were plenty of other seats available we asked if we could be seated at lower table to accommodate the elderly and the kids in our group. I understand that we were accommodated without prior booking being in large group, but what I don’t understand is why we could not have a more suitable table and why the “bookings” could not have used the table that was given to us. All of this could have been politely explained to us, but there was a definite feeling of dismissiveness from management. Again these tables remained unused through out our lunch meal. So their reasoning...