The Dating Sandwich.

 The restaurant was booked for 7.30. The cab booked for six o'clock. We were going out on a fancy date, something we do very rarely. The restaurant, Blank, was very expensive but very good. We'd been there before, just once and at the very end of COVID - the staff half blind behind opaque plastic masks - but we really enjoyed the food and the ambiance, so we wanted to experience it when the staff had faces. 

At twenty past six, Susan rang the cab company. They told us we were next in the queue, once they'd assigned a driver. The original plan had been to stop off at The Jeggy Nettle pub for a drink, and slowly wade into the evening. The driver eventually arrived, in a banana-yellow advert for the cab company. He was thirty-five minutes late and, as we had prepaid £12.20 for the fare, he drove the most circuitous route around Belfast to avoid having to give us change. A gratuity was not forthcoming.  

We arrived at The Jeggy Nettle at seven. I ordered two large Hendricks and tonics. The youth who took the order did so without making eye contact or breaking into his conversation with a colleague, except to bark the price at me. He gave us slimline tonics, which was a nice touch. We went to sit down, but were moved on as the entire lower area had been booked out, though seeing us sitting there was the only thing that prompted the staff to put a sign up mentioning it. We went outside where there was leaning room only. So we leaned and drank. Belfast, with this customer service you're really spoiling us. 

I was about to huff, when I bumped into my friend Helen whom I hadn't seen in a decade and who was on one of her rare sojourns back to the old country. She salved my fractious mood. Thanks Helen. 

We wandered down Chlorine Gardens (no, really, that's an actual place) to the restaurant, and were warmly greeted at the door and taken to our table. It was next to the kitchen and I had my back to the room, two things I hate. There was a slight smell of latrines and a stain on my napkin...even here, I thought...even here...

...and then I un-thought it. Because I was having a really great time. I love Blank. It's probably my favourite restaurant in Belfast. It has tremendous ambiance. It's intimate, light, airy - there's a skylight - and not too noisy - even when you're near the kitchen. I stopped smelling the drains after about five minutes. 

The staff are friendly, informative and attentive. I'd forgotten what it was like not to be a palpable inconvenience to people you're trying to buy things from. They knew their stuff too. So refreshing. The food started arriving almost immediately. We were on the six course taster menu with the "signature" wine pairing. Yes, I know. I don't care. We do this maybe twice a year. Fuck you. 

Blank's ethos (or gimmick) is that you get what you're given. They tell you a list of ingredients, locally sourced natch, but not what they'll do with them. Our six courses contained the following: salmon, butter, coley, beef, cheddar, sea vegetables, (sudden visions of Box from Logan's Run with his repeated cries of "sea greens, proteins from the sea!") blackberries, duck, goat cheese, truffles, apples, strawberries. 

The cheddar was unrecognisable, whipped into a froth in a biscuit shell, with submerged apple within. The sea vegetables were foraged by head chef Marty in Castlewellan Forest, which was nice of him. The coley was my favourite course. The duck Susan's, but there was also a battery of puddings at the end that had her eyes wide as saucers. It's a six course affair, but with the application of appetisers and digestifs it's nearer ten. To finish, I order a Robin Redbreast 12 year, because I've always been intrigued by it. It was not my style of whiskey at all, and it was delicious. 

The wines though: the False Bay Chenin Blanc from South Africa was utterly superb. I will chase this down. I need to hold it in my arms, smooth it's clean, green shoulders, pepper the seams of its cool neck with kisses. The Chateau Mirande Macon Villages from Burgundy was also delicious. The Martin Wassrner Muskateller from Germany a flipping marvel. Could it be I'm favouring whites these days? The Australian Motley Bunch GSM, and the two Italians Batasiola Barbera D'Alba and Alasia Brachetto D'Acqui were merely excellent. Cleverly paired, beautifully presented, this is rare luxury. It's a fairy tale environment. Tomorrow it'll be back to looking out of a bus window in the rain, to trying to get money out of people for services rendered, to pressing my face against the cold indifference of life, but here now, everything tastes good, feels good and we're having a great time. 

We got a taxi home. The taxi driver, a garrulous chap from West Belfast, wasted no time in telling us we'd never get him in a place like Blank. "What is it?" he said, "it's just like a house. And you're paying crazy prices, crazy prices." He then went on to decry their methods of cooking steaks "They put it in the pan and press it down, then they turn it over and do the same again and say it's cooked. It's totally raw. You send it back to the chef to cook it properly he get's annoyed! It's crazy. What happened to the customer is always right? Wild." He seemed genuinely affronted. His idea of a good night out? Don't worry - he told us. In exacting detail. It's the The Devenish Complex in Finaghy. Two courses, £17.95, cooked the way you like it. There's a massive plasma and a gym! Function rooms. Karaoke. Bands. Everything you could want. He then started telling where to get the cheap pints in town: The Kremlin and The Maverick on a Monday and Tuesday. 

I wondered about this man. A taxi driver who was picking us up from a restaurant and desperate to tell us we had completely wasted our money on our night out. That the restaurant was a racket because it was just someone's house, and the food was barely cooked anyway. Then confidently recommending a Madri sponsored glass and steel omniplex "just a stones throw from the M1 and M2" which sells pub grub to people in shorts, and then the two most famous gay bars in town. 

Was this a put on? Was he having a laugh at the expense of the pretentious English idiots with too much money? But if this was character comedy it was beautifully sustained and nuanced. He seemed genuinely to believe fancy cooking was a racket we deluded souls had bought into, and really, if we thought about it, what we really wanted was a lager, a browned through steak and access to all the sports channels. Also, I was clearly queer. 

So, Belfast there. Topping and tailing the dating experience. A sandwich of fabulous, thoughtful professionalism, between two curling, stale slices of Wonder Bread Classic White. Past its sell-by-date.