Pablos, 22 Church Lane, Belfast, BT1 4QN, www.pablosbelfast.com
THE food we gravitate to, the food we need, at two o’clock in the morning isn’t necessarily the food we’d want at a more sensible hour of the day or night. If you’re looking for something to eat at that time, odds are that it will arrive in you stomach on top of a lot of other stuff that’s been ingested – and may take its revenge in the not to distant future.
When that’s the case, you get kebabs that would terrify in the cold light of day or stuff from a hatch in a van that looks like it would give sleepless nights to an MOT inspector, never mind a health inspector. And because we may be a little bit merry that doesn’t matter. But it should.
Seven and a half years after the fact I can still taste the finest thing I’ve had to eat in the early hours with an inevitable hangover biding its time in my system – and it wasn’t anything on chips. After a friend’s stag night, a group of us arrived back to his house to find an apple crumble in the kitchen. Whichever one of us had enough wits still about us to heat it in the oven did the needful, some custard (bright yellow, tinned, sickly, gorgeous) was located and we settled down to spectacular bowl of 3am delight.
But until someone starts firing quality hot desserts out of chip vans, what can be done?
Food available in the early hours doesn’t need to be all that good. Inebriation and a sauce whose only adjective is ‘house’ will hide a multitude of sins. Pablos in Belfast city centre opens until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays (really Saturdays and Sundays but you know what I mean) and must do a roaring trade from patrons of Muriel’s next door based on nothing more than convenience – never mind the quality of what’s on offer.
Pablos is an offshoot of Muriel’s, with a couple of tables outside and not much more than two shelves against a wall inside facing a counter behind which a hot plate and a clutch of fryers knock out stuff the soberest of judges would hard pressed to find fault with at any hour of the day.
You can order from Muriel’s or they’ll also deliver to another nearby bar in the family, the Spaniard. The choice is everything you might like to have after, or with, a few. There are five burgers, from the basic 128482 at a fiver to the La Catedral with cheese, the El Patron with bacon and cheese, a chicken burger called Don Pablo and the vegetarian La Catedral. The names are all references to Pablo himself, as in Escobar. Because nothing says delicious lunch like a murderous drug lord.
That issue of taste aside, the La Cathedral was a good non-meat option, offering the kick always necessary to prevent bean burgers being pointless stodge the bread and toppings could have done without. There are also fries, thin and hot and crisp, with dry seasonings or lacquered in cheese sauce the colour of tinned custard and probably just as bad/good.
There are 24 sauces/dips available, highlighted by a chimichurri mayonnaise limey enough to pass for one of Muriel’s dangerously drinkable caipirinhas next door.
Beyond the burgers, there are pickles, both straight out of the jar and frittered, and chicken wings. For the sweet of tooth there are churros, either dusted in sugar or accompanied by chocolate sauce. There’s no apple crumble. Not yet anyway.
But this is a burger place (or burger ‘joint’ as it's the law to call them now) that will stand and fall on the quality of its basic offering. Pablos stands tall. Patties a couple of thumbs thick, the menu tells you they’re made from Hannan’s salt-aged shorthorn beef, and just the look of them before they hit the heat tells you they’re going be well worth the wait for them to be cooked perfectly.
It’s not typical ‘fast’ food, either in quality or speed.
Around a quarter of the sauces and some tortilla chips were sitting on the counter to pass the time until the burger’s arrival. It was structurally perfect, with a good roll holding a spectacular burger. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better one in Belfast at any time, never mind at two in the morning.
THE BILL
La Catedral burger £6
Medellin burger £5
Salt and pepper frites £2.50
Smoked salt and chilli frites £2.50
Blue cheese sauce £1
Chimichurri mayonnaise £1
