Ben Madigans Bar & Kitchen — Restaurant in Belfast

I was visiting my brother with my sister and his partner for my birthday, he lives locally so we went in for a couple of drinks. The bar staff were friendly and the prices were good, however the atmosphere and DJ were less so. The DJ had a microphone and was regularly asking people to make requests, the volume was also going up and down wildly from song to song. I went over and asked if we could make some, he gave me a pen and a piece of paper, i asked if it was okay to put in a few, he said this was fine. We returned a list of twelve songs, including such modern classics as "wuthering heights" by Kate bush, "breathe" by Sean Paul and Blu Cantrell and "Golden Skans" by the Klaxons, which we thought were popular and varied enough. The guy continued to get on the mic, telling, specifically women, that they should get up and dance, which we thought was weird, like "come on, we want to see ladies on the floor" and "women need to be on the floor tonight" it was a medium busy pub and it just came off as a bit intense. A few times he even mentioned a specific woman by name and put pressure on her to dance, as far as we could see she did not and again it was just odd. Ironically we would have probably all got up to dance if he had played any of our requests but he didn't..in fact, when I I went to the toilet he said, I haven't forgotten about your requests, but we try and avoid that kind of stuff. But I'll play it later, I just said excellent, and went to the bathroom. He didn't in fact play any of our tunes, we waited until 11 and then left. And at that stage he was still walking around the pub telling people to request songs and telling just women they should dance. I would come back to the pub again, for sure, but not on a Saturday. 😂 And if it could maybe be passed on that if you want people to dance, maybe play the songs they asked for and don't wander around the pub naming folk to try and get them to dance in...

I've been before and the food/atmosphere was great, so we decided to go today for Sunday lunch...what a letdown it was. We went in and the place was packed, so much so that it almost felt like everyone was sitting on top of each other. My back was rubbing against the guy behind me even though he was sitting at a different table. It was that tight.

The 'Classic Ben's Fishcake' was pretty much 90% mashed potato and 10% fish. It was like wet bread with barely any fish/crab in it. There was next to no taste to it, we should've just ordered a bowl of mashed potatoes if that was the case.

The Vegan Nut Roast looked amazing on the plate but again, it was like the nut roast itself was held together by plain flour, I can't describe it, it was like eating mushy flour with seeds and onions in it. There was just no taste to it apart from flour. I don't understand how the food quality has got so bad, maybe they got a new chef or something? It got to the point that I was almost gagging with every bite, so I just left most of it on the plate. There were two small pieces of triangle shaped carrots, and two small pieces of Asparagus for the vegetable potion on the plate, it was a joke.

We thought the dessert would be better, but the Cheesecake just didn't taste normal either. The biscuit base felt like it was glued together and very doughy and not crumbly, and the actual cheesecake itself was crumbly/crusty? It honestly felt like it had just been left out in the open for a few days, and tasted like it was out of date. I had to leave most of that on my plate too. Another person at our table mentioned the strange taste and texture of their Cheesecake too. I just don't understand how the food has got to the point that 3 people at the table all complained about the same problems with their food. It seriously wasn't worth the money we paid. That'll be the last time we go here. Next time we'll go...

Very sad to leave this review as I am a local and I have been to Benqrogans so many times and had great meals and experiences there. I was so excited when Ben madigans opened to have somewhere so nice local to us but I was in recently and unfortunately I did not have the same experience myself and my partner went in on a Sunday evening for food, we were seated and then the server took half an hour to come back to us to take our order ( it was not busy, there was us and three other tables being used a few people sitting at the bar) after this she out the order in our food came out about 20 minutes later after this she took our plates and we waited for the main....and we waited for a long time we were waiting between our starter and main for almost an hour without any staff approaching us to update us or check in until I got up and asked them politely as I hate when people are rude to staff and I am never one of those people. They assured us the food would be ready in 15minutes at this point we had been waiting 35 minutes the waitress who was dealing with us would not look in our direction she was up at the bar talking to a woman to cake in with a child who was not eating or drinking in the restaurant or bar while there were tables and people waiting for food that was not coming. This was not just us the two tables opposite us also were becoming inpatient. We waited the 15 minutes, then 20, and then 30 at this point we got to the 1hour mark and we had no time left to wait I had to get up and notify the staff who were all standing at an empty bar talking to eachother. They never apologised once they entire hour noone approached us at all, I am so so disappointed as I was...