Flame,
The Ewart Tower,
3 Bedford Square,
Belfast,
BT2 7EP
028 9033 2121
flamerestaurant.co.uk
A restaurant moving location will always throw up issues that wouldn’t arise if you just stayed put and kept ploughing on as usual.
This is especially true of well-established places that have built up the name, reputation and familiarity key to staying in business for a long time in a notoriously difficult industry.
Flame has been in business a long time and recently moved from the spot it had occupied for a decade in Howard Street in Belfast city centre to the ground floor of the shiny new Ewart Building nearby.
But just moving round a couple of corners doesn’t necessarily make the process any easier.
Regulars can be thrown, though the discombobulation is more likely to be felt by people who pass in the street and maybe once noticed where you were and now aren’t so sure. Flame has moved from one of the busiest locations in the city to a still prominent but more tucked away spot, wedged between Bedford and Franklin streets.
The day we went, Flame was treated to a Trip Advisor review complaining that it “would be great if they told you that the restaurant door was padlocked and closed down. Allowed me book a table but was closed down, what’s that all about!!!”.
A free exclamation mark to anyone who can guess what obviously happened.
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Yes, it’s a Trip Advisor review and, yes, a restaurant’s responsibilities stop a long way short of holding someone’s hand as it reads them information from the website like a bedtime story, but it highlights one of those issues. Change can throw people.
Despite this, plenty have managed to find their way on a Thursday lunchtime to the handsome room, a much larger and grander space than Flame previously occupied.
Among the £4 snacks are a big bowl of puffy pork scratchings, all crunch and crack and not a trace of greasiness, with flakes of smoked salt and the twang of an apple and cider puree.
A starter of cured salmon is similarly nicely balanced, the pieces of pert fish set off by little bits of pickled veg and blobs of horseradish creme fraiche and watercress puree.
More well-judged fish comes in the form of a piece of smoked coley on a pea and broad bean risotto, a lunchtime special for £8.
It’s in the main evening menu for £22 and it’s difficult to work out just where the extra £14 worth of stuff comes from after five in the evening. A bigger piece of fish, no doubt, but with this difference you’d wonder if it might give you a lift home after dinner. This isn’t to rain on the evening offering but rather praise what you’re getting at lunch for £8.
It’s a soupier sort of risotto but it’s a good one – verdant, Kermit-coloured with rice cooked to the bite and the just-smoked-enough fish coming apart in shimmering flakes. The gentle warmth of curry oil finishes it off. It’s lovely stuff.
But the place is called Flame, so one of the two steaks on offer at lunch – there are another two later – feel like an appropriate test of things. It’s a test that’s passed but only just about, and really not well enough.
The sirloin and chips are absolutely 100 per cent fine. Nothing more, nothing less. But for £32 – no difference to the evening prices this time – it should be much more than passable.
The meat itself is well cooked but entirely forgettable. The chips don’t live long in the memory either, though they needed to be cooked better by being cooked more. Missing another layer of crunch and lacking much spud flavour, like the steak they were helped by being dunked in the excellent veal jus, but for £32 you shouldn’t be relying on a little bowl of gravy to save things.
A nicely made cheesecake and very nicely made chocolate fondant round things off, well, nicely, the fondant approaching the high notes of those opening salvoes and the risotto.
Getting the steak and chips up to that level every single time would make Flame a place to really seek out.
THE BILL
Pork scratchings £4
Cured salmon £9
Sirloin steak £32
Smoked coley risotto £8
Chocolate fondant £7
Cheesecake £7
Tropic thunder mocktail £5
Opal Fruits mocktail £5
Total £77
