The Sphinx, Belfast
In the 1970s, Belfast’s most exotic takeaway food was a portion of chips covered in gravy or, for the more adventurous, curry sauce. When a far-sighted Egyptian cook opened The Sphinx in the city’s university area in 1980, Belfast’s first experience of the Middle East was a menu as mysterious as the restaurant’s Giza-based stone namesake. Seduced by exotic-sounding kebabs and falafel, I was among their very first customers and remain a devoted patron to this day. Following a ground-up rebuild several years ago, the new Sphinx still stands head and shoulders above every other kebab shop in the city, has won numerous awards and is much beloved by sober locals for their top-notch doner kebabs made with proper meat carved from the spit, stuffed into pitta bread and topped with their secret recipe sauce. Ask for an “Irish”, and they’ll hold the vegetables – why spoil a good meal with anything healthy?
74 Stranmillis Road
PB
My food vice… Pret A Manger ham, bacon and cheese croissant
Being someone who doesn’t really want to die any time soon, most mornings I force myself to eat a healthy if entirely underwhelming bowl of Bircher muesli. There are some days, though, when external factors – lack of sleep, a hangover, unrepentant gluttony – compel me to venture towards Pret A Manger’s hot food section and pick out this glorious, gloopy creation. Pret describes it as a croissant, but really it’s closer to a turnover, with a thick slab of cured ham, bacon lardons, emmenthal cheese and tomato sauce parcelled inside its doughy folds. The result is akin to a high-end Greggs, crispy, gooey and salty in the way that all delicious things tend to be, but without the attendant layer of grease. Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t have health risks of its own: each one contains more than half of your daily recommended allowance of saturated fat. The biggest danger though is the third-degree burns you’re likely to get from gleefully scarfing the thing down approximately 11 seconds after it’s emerged from Pret’s Large Hadron Collider of an oven.
£2.15 from Pret A Manger
GM
Boak & Bailey on booze: Saison style
A few years ago, saison was an obscure Belgian beer style beloved of beer geeks. Now everyone seems to be on the bandwagon, from hip UK craft brewers to regional giants such as Marston’s. Generally, saison is a blonde beer with a touch of wildness. Accessible, but just ever so slightly funky, thanks to the quirky strains of yeast that it’s fermented with. The best way to understand it is to drink the Wallonian saison most UK brewers are imitating, Saison Dupont (6.5%). Hazy, yellow and reminiscent of Hoegaarden, it is easy to fall in love with, especially as a 330ml bottle can usually be bought online for around two quid.
