Hendrix Restaurant| Belfast — Restaurant in Belfast

To celebrate its first birthday this Sunday, we were delighted to have been invited to Hendrix on the Stranmillis Road to raise a glass and enjoy some delicious food.

Just a short stroll from the Lyric Theatre, the Ulster Museum, and the Botanic Gardens, Hendrix has a stylish, relaxed vibe with some great weekly specials to complement the modern menu, including small plates, pasta dishes, tacos, and popular favourites such as burgers, nachos and loaded fries.

We started with a glass of fizz, and a couple of excellent cocktails from this week’s specials list; an Old Fashioned and a Spicy Margarita.

Our beautifully presented small plates of Caprese Salad with buffalo mozzarella, pesto & garlic bread, and “Crustacean Sensation” from the specials menu, with plump, juicy prawns in a Marie Rose sauce with piquant pickled radishes on a fabulous homemade parmesan soda bread, were perfect appetisers before the main event.

To follow, the Chicken Parm, a golden, breaded chicken breast with tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, crunchy fries, and a charred corn rib, was perfectly moist and flavourful, and the generously stuffed Baja Fish Tacos with slaw, salsa roja, pico de gallo, and pickled onion were a spicy delight. We also loved the side of Honey Chilli Tender Stem Broccoli: sweet & spicy and sprinkled with flaked almonds.

Desserts are also extremely good; the “old school” Apple Crumble with ice cream and crème anglaise was comfort food at its best, and the Affogato was covered in crumbly amaretti biscuits with a shot of Amaretto on the side for an extra almondy hit.

Hendrix’s first birthday celebrations on Sunday will be an amazing night of incredible dishes, food and cocktail specials, and lots of other fun...

First time dining here and it was a lovely experience. Staff were extremely attentive and nice decor.

I liked that the menu online was correct and it was easy to book a table.

The honey chilli chicken was lovely, very big portion size for the large. The Hendrix fries didn’t quite live up to my expectations from its description, I think the sour cream was the most prominent flavour so the rest for a bit lost and the chips cooled quite quickly so perhaps a hotter bowl would counter that. The dressing throughout the chips rather than on top would have been even better! Broccoli was lovely too.

The brownie is much more cakey than fudgey, so not to my preference, and I think just given the vibe, something more sophisticated that a warmed nutella sauce is certainly possible (and this is a baker talking). Only main gripe was the “vanilla” ice cream is an artificially flavoured mass produced one; no black vanilla seeds to be seen and I hate being charged for something like that.

Overall, I would...

Met for dinner with old friends over visiting from London. On a Thursday evening, the restaurant was really bustling, with a vibrant atmosphere. I'd picked the restaurant after looking at the menu which had good choices for the vegetarians in our party. We weren't disappointed! The food was delicious, fresh and tasty and portion sizes just right. Desserts were fabulous, particularly interesting and the winner was their version of affogato! The service we received was excellent, really attentive without being pushy. Our bottle of water (that was provided as soon as we were seated) was refreshed several times, including once at the end of the meal when we were the last customers in the building. We were chatting so much we hadn't realised all the other customers had gone and the staff didn't push for us to finish up which was a welcome change to other places. The bill, when it came, was very reasonable. All in all a great experience and would highly...