Deanes Meat Locker, 28-40 Howard Street, Belfast BT1 6PF (028 9033 1134). Starters £4.50-£14.50, mains £18.95-£39.50, desserts £7.50, wines from £24.95
Nothing lasts forever. Just ask Michael Deane. Next Friday will see the last service at Deanes Eipic, the grand, crisp-tableclothed restaurant that he opened in 1997 and which has held one of Belfast’s few Michelin stars for much of the intervening 25 years, and never had an apostrophe. Sadly, he says, it just doesn’t work any more; not when the tasting menu, with its cod in a champagne and yeast beurre blanc or its shorthorn tartare with quail’s egg, costs £100 a head. Deane recognises increased cost sensitivity “which is out of kilter with our fine dining offering at Eipic”. He has acknowledged the scourge of Brexit and the pestilence of Covid. People want something else, and he’s ready to give it to them.
