Neighbourhood Café, Belfast
The Genre-Bending Phenom
Belfast’s Neighbourhood Café is not just a café. It’s a phenom. It’s a meme at peak status.
Neighbourhood is going through its Joshua Tree/Nevermind/What’s the Story Morning Glory vibe right now, the breakout that keeps breaking out.
Taylor has her Swifties, Bieber has his Beliebers, which means that Neighbourhood Café has its Neighbours, fanatically devoted fans who will be waiting at sunup on a Saturday morning before the object of their desire actually opens the doors at 8.30am.
8.30am! Talk about being the zeitgeist.
We got the last table-for-two in the café, at exactly 8.45am on a Saturday morning. The stools around the room quickly filled up, and by 9.10am the queue at the door had begun to build, two-by-two, two-by-two.
It’s not as if the Neighbours have nowhere else to go. They have. But, when you have the faith, then there is only one true church: the Church of Neighbourhood. Going elsewhere would be apostasy, a betrayal of the true path.
Salvation lies through the doors on Donegall Street where, having entered, the faithful are sorted and seated by a manageress of such assured skill and foresight she would make St Peter fear for his job.
The new room is enormodome in size compared to the previous rooms, which is just as well as the crowds have grown. We know that you are wondering if there is merch and, relax, there is merch –T-shirts, totes, hats with Piccolo Split logos, umberellas, coffee cups – the vital signifiers.
The room has a Charles Rennie Mackintosh vibe, an art deco trope seen best in the design of the windows, and the pale wood and ivory tones are done just right: this is a masterly space.
Neighbourhood is now on its third album, having released two killer efforts, first at their debut site – just up the street, destroyed by fire – and then around the corner on Commercial Court, where their difficult second album attracted epic queues.
You peruse the menus, divided into Classics and Specials, then walk to the counter to order and collect your cutlery. The staff are both hip and hip to the trip, in sync with the svelte mood of confidence which Oisin McEvoy and Ryan Crown established on day one.
We went for two dishes that riff on similar ingredients: the Breakfast Bap puts smoked bacon, pork sausage and a fried egg with smoked cheese and house tomato relish in between brioche, whilst the Neighborhood Bagel folds scrambled eggs and a hash brown with sausage, cheese and a house sauce in a very good bagel.
These are quintessential pump up the dopamine dishes, big hits of sweet pork, melty cheese and unctuous egg that put all your favourite things together in one surprise-it’s-your-birthday! package. It’s irresistible kitchen sink food: pick it up with your hands and chow it down.
Of course the coffee is excellent, and there is a lush array of drinks for the people Neighbourhood appeals to: the young folk who think they will never own a house, and the older folk who worry about the three houses they do own.
Like faithful fans, we left having bought their peanut rayu – had it on the scrambled eggs last time: ace! – and the house granola. Our table was cleared and cleaned in seconds, and another couple came in from the cold and sat down, hungry for the zeitgeist.
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