DESPITE our having supposedly entered a culinary age which has
thrown off the stuffy prejudices of earlier decades, snobbery still prevails. When I said I was lunching in Belfast, astonishment was the politest response. But if Alastair Little and Sally Clarke represent the twin peaks of the New British Cooking, its spirit also resides, unquestionably, beyond the Kensington- Soho axis, in Ulsterman Paul Rankin's kitchens at Roscoff.
Paul Rankin came back to Belfast three years ago by way of the Napa Valley, the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver, the Gavroche and much travelling in the East; and, if pressed, he will admit to a cooking style which is 'modern French with Ameri- can and Asian influences', thus aligning himself with the culinary currency of the age. Where he differs from his peers, how- ever, is in his sober adherence to a more classical style of cooking. You may find the words 'crostini', `polenta', even 'sun-dried tomatoes' on his menu, but the Italian influence is not fulsomely evident; and his eclecticism is by way of a temperate blend- ing of tastes and ingredients rather than sprauncy juxtaposition.
The mood is of gentle elegance rather than a staccato contemporaneity, and this goes for the bright, creamy-walled room too. Sitting here, one could think oneself, rather, in some unceremoniously chic restaurant in Milan: the modishness of smoked glass and steely shininess is harmo- nious rather than inhibiting. The atmo- sphere, even in a room that bulges daily with the beau monde of Belfast (who seem to be a beautifully dressed lot), is calm.
A set lunch, three courses and coffee for £11.95 has to be considered a prime lure. A choice of four from each course included, on the starter list, a salad of densely fleshed, flavoursome confit of duck with green beans and parsley-flecked, just-warm potatoes, thickly sliced, which was followed by medallions of pork with cabbage in an intense but lightly finished, cream-thick- ened, grainy mustard sauce. To end, from this prix fixe, was chosen a bowl of buttery vanilla ice-cream topped with caramelised bananas and pecans. Other choices — stuffed pigs' trotters with lentils and thyme, roast shoulder of lamb with polenta, sun- dried tomatoes and rosemary — encour- aged staying with the set menu, but it would have been impossible to ignore the a
la carte altogether. A smoked salmon `millefeuille' comes in a feathered slab of crisp, wheaty bread layered with mild, sweet salmon and marinated red onions, a reminder of richness in an austere age. Curiously compelling was the cheddar and scallion soup, on top a blistered ochre crust revealing, at the tap of a spoon, the golden liquid beneath, laced with a network of chewily melting cheese and chopped spring onion: this was campsite bonfire cooking grown up, robust and heartening.
The fish was exceptional. A delicate and soft-fleshed fillet of turbot came with a salty, chilli-sprinkled crust with wilted greens and tomatoes and basil; eating this, I all but forgot my usual strictures against tomatoes with fish. Normally the acid bois- terousness of tomato ravages the subtlety of white fish; here everything merged into a perfect whole. Like most of Rankin's food, it combines deft refinement with a brisk sturdiness. The steamed symphony of seafood, despite its nouvelle-ish tag, is solid and warming: scallops, prawns and lobster are fleshed out with hake, sole and mussels — or whatever entices at the market in nearby Ardglass on the day — and bound together in an aromatic sauce of cream infused with saffron, ginger and chervil. On the side sit plump lobster ravioli.
It is rarely the pudding course that holds my attention. Here I could hardly draw away from it, in agonies of indecision between the white chocolate and cherry tri- fle and the toffee puddings. The toffee puddings won. But knowing that this would not, could not, be my last visit, the choice was not too painful. And, anyway, how could it be? On a plate came a steamed sticky toffee pudding,.a toffee pecan tartlet and a small mound of toffee ice-cream.
Locals and devotees already know about it, and although Roscoff is definitely worth a special journey, I do realise that Belfast isn't a place people ordinarily consider an inviting place for a jaunt. It's a pity. At lunch, for the four of us, with a bottle of non-vintage champagne and another of vel- vety Fleurie, the bill only just went into three figures. But the price is a bonus; the food is the point.
Roscoff 7 Lesley House, Shaftesbury Square, Belfast; tel 0232 331532
Nigella Lawson
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