Trademarket,
14-16 Dublin Road,
Belfast,
BT2 7HN, trademarketbelfast.com
TIMING is important at Trademarket, the outdoor food hall that sits in the space vacated by the demolished Movie House cinema on Belfast's Dublin Road.
First of all, it's not open on Monday or Tuesday, so don't go then. The Thursday we visited, one place was closed and another wasn't quite open yet.
Had our timing been even worse, or better depending on your perspective, we could have been tucking into a burrito full of chips – I know – or downing a pint of alcohol-free Guinness – I know – in the company of royalty. A few days earlier the Prince and Princess of Wales paid a visit, muddling and shaking their way through a cocktail-making competition.
If it had delayed the making of the fantastic Hey Honey! – cachaca, strawberry, lime and hot Aleppo honey – Wills and Kate would have had some explaining to do.
But we'll never know. Probably best for everyone.
Trademarket is the same idea as Common Market across the city centre, with the addition of shops, but the main attraction is the food – and two well-stocked bars and those excellent cocktails, even when made by commoners.
The bill you'll find at the end of this isn't so much for a couple of meals but rather a stab at getting across everything Trademarket has to offer.
That includes a bagel delivery a couple of days later but excludes a duplicate order of a pie that provided an experience demanding to be repeated.
Pipian specialises in California-style burritos which, when you find out what they are, could just have easily been invented in Sandy Row as San Diego.
First of all, choose your meat or veg – in this case fall-apart, deeply flavoured birria beef, cooked for a day, that comes with a sparky lime crema and the crunch of pickled onions.
Then pick a salsa and get it stuffed into a tortilla with a fistful of chips. You'll want one.
Across the way, Kubo started in lockdown from chef Nallaine Calvo's home kitchen as a box delivery service for her Filipino dishes.
Here, a plate of mushroom 'chicharon' sees the fungus cooked to ape the appearance and texture of the deep fried pork skin snack.
It's remarkably successful. It's not the same thing – pork crackling is what it is – but the oyster mushrooms pack a whack of flavour and give just a little inside the knobbly batter.
Lightly sticky rice and a ginger and sesame dressing cut through the deep fried crunch, as does a tangle of pickled veg.
Another venture which began life in a domestic kitchen is Bodega Bagels, started by Steven Orr and Kirsty Walker in September 2021.
They were shutting up shop as we were leaving so, in the devastatingly professional spirit of completism, a delivery service was engaged to bring a couple to our door for a Saturday bunch.
One with avocado, a soft omelette and melting cheese, the other a stone-cold classic of thick slices of smoked salmon, capers, onion, tomato and scallion cream cheese.
The fillings are lovely but the bagels themselves are the stars and the difference makers. The shining crust is just hard enough to crack and shatter, giving way to the tell-tale chew of a really good bagel. This is not a bread roll with a hole in it. It's superb. Great cookies too.
It's all very well having the idea to start slinging stuff from your kitchen during lockdown, but the main thing is you have to be really good at actually making the stuff in question for it to work.
So Kubo and Bodega Bagel owe most of their success to the skill of the people behind them, and the same goes for Pie Queen.
Shonee McWilliams's job as a chef disappeared with the pandemic and she eventually settled into producing pies from her east Belfast kitchen and fulfilling online orders.
They continue to fly out the door and out of her corner of Trademarket, and it's obvious why.
'Hunter chicken' is the type of chicken and ham pie you won't find just anywhere. Flawless pastry, so thoroughly rammed with stuff and generously, perfectly proportioned that you want to pick it up with both hands and eat like a sandwich. So I do.
The only sweet pie left is spiced pumpkin, topped with a crown of blistered meringue. After the chicken it's hardly breaking news to report that it's impossible to fault. Another is needed to take home. Just to be sure.
Thankfully there's still one left.
Get the timing right at Trademarket and it's unlikely you'll go wrong.
THE BILL
Mushroom chicharon (Kubo) £7.50
Chicken pie (Pie Queen) £6.75
Spiced pumpkin pie (Pie Queen) £5.75
Beef burrito (Pipian) £9
ACE bagel (Bodega Bagels) £7
Lox bagel (Bodega Bagels) £7.50
Boulder cookie (Bodega Bagels) £3.50
Guinness 0.0 £4.20
Hey Honey! cocktail £9
Total £60.20
