Midway through lunch, Chris McClurg emerges from the kitchen bearing a gastro chock-full of oysters, grinning as if he’d grown them himself. They’re from Carlingford, so perfectly uniform they barely look real. It’s a small, endearing moment, but it tells you most of what you need to know about Regency House: local matters, enthusiasm too, but quality is what keeps the engine running.
After 13 years at Paul Ainsworth at No6, McClurg returned home with his partner Alice Stewart to take on this Georgian townhouse on Belfast’s Upper Crescent. Upstairs, the drawing room is a cosy jumble of the pair’s antique finds, dark wood and characterful corners for cocktails and coffee. Downstairs, the intimate restaurant features exposed brick and sage green banquettes, facing a compact open kitchen beneath a domed skylight.
Those oysters are as good as they look: plump and briny against a raspberry-heavy natural pink sparkling. Saddleback pig rib, all rich sweetness and rendered fat, is lacquered in heady barbecue, charred hard and finished with sticky Pedro Ximénez. It’s a must-order, but so is everything we touch: Fermanagh Mangalitsa culatello, Murley Mountain lamb saddle, fresh agnolotti beneath a Manzanilla sherry and Coolattin cheddar foam.
Monkfish tail is brined, then grilled slowly, leaving it tender and flaky enough to soak up a silky red curry and kaffir sauce. Pilaf rice enriched with caramelised shallot butter and fragrant Vichy carrots complete the picture. Elsewhere, the signature potato cake lands as a towering, burnished wedge: Lyonnaise onion compote sandwiched by crisp rosti, piped with a crown of whipped fromage blanc. There’s not a weak link in sight.
Nor should you expect one at dessert. Echoing McClurg’s Great British Menu entry, a dark chocolate fondant – laced with Pedro Ximénez, set snug in its sable case – releases a torrent of molten chocolate cut with tangy cream cheese ice cream, crunchy hazelnut and plump currants. Sticky toffee pudding made with beef fat over butter is a clever bit of kitchen thinking: familiar sweetness, comforting savoury depth, and a spoon of Cornish clotted cream.
Regency House fills a yawning gap in Belfast’s dining scene: a restaurant as relaxing as it is special, the loveliest team you could hope for, and a kitchen with ambition in the tank. What comes from the pass is hit after hit, and no one’s taking their foot off the gas.