Review: Bootleggers

Wet Saturdays encourage comfort, which is why we've hit the Bootleggers, for a feast of unashamed dirty food, the sort of place where you're handed a kitchen roll instead of a napkin and elbows are firmly encouraged to stay on the table.

It's a million miles away from the dubious pleasures of the many clean eating venues springing up in the leafier suburbs, and all the better for it.

We're talking faux dive here, folks, which is like a dive, but clean, and with pleasant staff and with the only air of threat emerging from the speakers in the form of Murder Ballads era Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

There's a great selection of bottled beers and, heaven be praised, Sierra Nevada on tap, as well as a charity cocktail list, which does good, while doing you no favours.

There's undoubtedly been time and money spent on this room, which captures the classic American diner experience so expertly, you almost expect to find Guy Fieri flipping patties and humming Crazy Town tunes to himself.

There's a slender menu with burgers to the fore, a few other classics available and some high end bar snacks for the merely peckish.

There's half a dozen different beef burger options, which we're pleased to report can be cooked medium, for people who enjoy the taste of beef, or well done, if you don't, all with a variety of toppings - we opt for the Pig out, which includes pulled pork, slaw and crispy onions, the chicken goujons, pork belly bites and, just to round out the order some French fries and sweet potato chips.

The pork belly, advertised as a 'sides or sharing' portion comes on like the mother of all bar snacks, exactly the sort of thing you want to eat in the middle of a session.

"Give us enough of the apple sauce that comes with it and we’ll quite happily Elvis death meal on it."




Pork belly can be so easily ruined, leading to a stringy, fatty disaster, but not here - dare I say it, these seem closer to confit rather than deep fried, with no oily residue to mop up. Give us enough of the apple sauce that comes with it and we'll quite happily Elvis death meal on it.

The burger arrives cooked pink as we wanted it, and needs cut down with knife and fork before it can be lifted.
The chicken goujons haven't been annihilated by overzealous frying and, flying in the face of fashion, breaded as opposed to battered. What we're left with is pure comfort food, chicken schnitzel strips with their own sauce and more slaw. Why slaw? Because we don't have the time to say coleslaw in the world of the future!

The cooking's far from delicate, but just because we're doing ultra casual dining doesn't mean that it can't be done with flair and precision. What we have here is a canny understanding of what people really want to eat, with enough know how to elevate the food beyond the standard of fryer-heavy pub grub merchants.

Shane Horan

Bootleggers can be found at 46 Church Lane and online at bootleggersbelfast.com. Keep up to date via FB/bootleggers and Instagram @bootleggersbelfast.

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