Bar + Block Steakhouse
2-6 Waring Street,
Belfast,
BT1 2DX.
028 9693 1227
barandblock.co.uk/belfast
HOW is your bovine anatomy knowledge? A little lacking? Then head to Bar + Block and you’ll be able to add another potential Mastermind specialist subject to your back pocket.
Find the shank while you wait, locate the chuck while you eat, track down the brisket on your way to the toilet.
Apart from the many wall decorations providing meat maps on silhouetted cattle – including two just outside said toilets – the menu dives a little deeper with words and pictures and doneness and wine recommendations.
You may leave Bar + Block underwhelmed, but you won’t be able to claim you’re undereducated.
The restaurant is part of the Premier Inn hotel on Waring Street in Belfast city centre and it’s every bit what you’d expect of a chain steakhouse straining for some right-now hipness. There’s a lot of wood and exposed brick, a bit of neon and all those diagrams of your dinner.
There’s also the standard provenance boasts about meat, which is where it gets a bit weird.
“Our classic cuts come from British breeds of cattle reared across the Pampas in South America.” OK.
I get why somewhere would be bigging up a beef backstory if it comes from down the road where Farmer Pat gives the cows head massages and sings them to sleep with Sam Cooke tunes, but this?
Yes, your steak started life 7,000 miles away but the most important thing is that a long-lost relative emigrated from Blighty 150 years ago. It feels a very Brexity sort of argument. Which we’ll return to.
The steaks themselves – which range from £11.95 to £26.95 depending on size and cut – are actually good. Not the absolute beefiest you’ll ever find, but the ribeye was nicely marbled with the fat nearly as softly melting as the meat.
The fillet could have been cut with a spoon – which is what you’re looking for if that’s what you’re ordering – and both were cooked bang on medium rare.
Neither needed a sauce, which is just as well, because the sauces would have ruined anything they touched.
For an extra £1.50 a small pot, you could get a bearnaise as fundamentally split as the Conservative Party or a chimichurri so astringently bitter it could run for Nigel Farage’s lot.
The samphire – every steak comes with samphire, which is great because samphire is great – tastes of nothing. It’s completely underseasoned, which is a neat trick as it’s salty without any seasoning going on it in the first place. Somehow they’ve managed to suck the flavour right out of it. Maybe I’ll dip it in some sauce. Oh. Right.
And this is what you get. Some solid hits and some woeful misses.
The chips are decent and the chargilled wedge of hispi cabbage is excellent, although it’s difficult to mess something like that up.
You don’t see burrata – mozzarella’s slinky, cream-filled cousin – that often on menus here and it was ordered slightly sceptically.
But the cheese was good, buttery, milky and fresh. The chargrilled vegetables with it were basically indistinguishable from each other. The tomato, courgette, onion and peppers were bland enough that each could happily (sadly) pass for the other.
Other starters are mainly small plates, with a couple of these also displaying Bar + Block’s inconsistency.
Cheese and jalapeno stuffed dippers are deep fried pastry parcels filled with a vaguely cheesy mush, while the salt and pepper squid is hot, crispy, savoury and just right.
Desserts are good too, with nothing to complain about in a crispy, chewy meringue topped with berries and cream and a rhubarb and custard sundae, nicely sweet and sharp.
The cocktails are better than good, the best of which was a rhubarb gin fizz that sung of high summer, though it would need to be good for £8.99.
On a Saturday afternoon between lunch and dinner the place was busy, and the staff did their best to keep up with demand, mostly managing it briskly and always with good humour.
A buy one steak get one free promotion was still running when we visited – the bill at the bottom doesn’t account for that – which may explain the busyness.
As a hotel restaurant it will always benefit from a slightly captive audience, even if better – and definitely more consistent – options exist right outside the door.
THE BILL
Burrata salad £7.50
Salt and pepper squid £6.50
Cheese and jalapeno dippers £3.95
Fillet steak £19.95
Ribeye steak £15.50
Bearnaise sauce £1.50
Chimichurri sauce £1.50
Hispi cabbage £3.25
Pavlova £5.95
Rhubarb and custard sundae £5.95
Old Fashioned £7.99
Espresso Martini £7.99
Mojito £7.99
Rhubarb gin fizz £8.99
Total £104.51
