It was a close friend who put Blank on my radar, which only opened at the end of 2021.  It’s on the Malone Road out of Belfast, past Queen’s University, in a smart conversion of a Victorian townhouse.  Blank restaurant only uses produce from the island of Ireland, so everything is guaranteed to be in season.   Blank is so called because it doesn’t have a menu as such, because dishes can change depending on what’s available, but diners are given a list of most of the ingredients featured for that night’s dinner and their provenance.  At £60 for 5 courses one needs a fair amount of trust to go and ‘eat blind’ at a new restaurant, but I saw on their website that their head chef Niall Duffy  has some good restaurant experience under his belt, including at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London, so I made a booking for a Wednesday night in March 2022.

We were warmly greeted by the General Manager Alex Daley, a Kiwi with an Ulster accent, and seated at a generously sized table for two.  We later noticed that the tables at the far end of the long and elegant dining room, where there are views of the open kitchen, are smaller and there aren’t any ‘counter’ seats.  We let Alex know that we both wanted the wine flight at £30 per person.  Throughout the evening Alex was assisted by a talented waiter from Barcelona, who also had an Ulster twang, which made me smile.

First we were brought an amuse bouche in the form of a cheese gougere, which was simple and tasty. 6.5/10

Our first course was West coast sea trout tartare, with “watermelon radish”, sea herbs and a buttermilk and dill oil sauce. This was the best piece of trout I’ve ever had! And its accompaniments worked very well with it; a great dish. 9.5/10

Our second course was monkfish and carrot with a cardamon foam.  I thought the fish was a touch over-salted and a little undercooked, but it was nonetheless delicious.  I tend to ruin monkfish by overcooking it; it’s a hard one to get right, but I now think “less is more” when it comes to cooking monkfish. The fish went very well with its sauce and the pickled carrot element was a good touch to cut through the butter in the foam.  8/10

Our main course was sirloin of beef with potato gratin, black garlic, watercress puree, “Tokyo turnips” and gravy. The turnips were tasty and interesting, but difficult to describe. The beef was oh so tender and flavoursome. Overall this was a tasty well balanced plate of food. 8.5/10

The fourth course was actually a pre-dessert, which isn’t normally classified as a course on its own. We had blood orange sorbet and granita with wood sorrel. It was delicious and refreshing. But maybe different flavours of sorbet and granita would have been more impressive? And how do they source oranges from Ireland?  7.5/10

For dessert proper we had a delicious and smooth whiskey chocolate delice with Chantilly cream and a shard of tempered chocolate. This was expertly made and delicious. 8/10

We didn’t order coffee, but we were served petit fours (a whiskey sour jelly and a salted caramel chocolate) along with a complimentary ‘night cap’ of Disaronno, which was very kind of GM Alex.

Blank was full on this wet Wednesday evening, which is a good sign for this young business. We had a very good meal, which exceeded my expectations, and I predict Blank is worthy of a Michelin star next year. Overall 8.5/10

The wine flight at just £30 was very good, and my total bill for two, including a Champagne aperitif, came to £235.40.