There’s an art to not showing off, and when your food is this good, you don’t need to shout about it. Jay Rayner heads to Noble, just outside Belfast
Noble, 27a Church Road, Holywood, County Down BT18 9BU (028 9042 5655). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £90
It’s one of those midsummer’s evenings in Northern Ireland when dusk lingers, as if ambivalent to the concept of night ever falling. The roads are shower slicked and the verges smell of earth and damp and the deepest green. We are in Holywood, the tidy commuter town just outside Belfast, and from an upstairs window overlooking the shopping parade comes the music of happy people lost in their chatter. Let that be your guide, because you’re unlikely to spot Noble otherwise. It is marked only by a street-level doorway; that, and some stupendous cooking.
The butter round here ought to be at the heart of its own religion, and is now at the heart of mine
Few restaurants would have the confidence to make classic white risotto, because they don’t know how
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