Located in East Belfast, the outside of the Welder's Club does not look like a restaurant or pub. In fact, it resembled a long-closed Blockbuster Video store; it's metallic facade as uninviting and archaic as the thought of actually travelling to a store to rent movies in 2015.
Standing in the shadows of Samson and Goliath, the twin shipbuilding gantry cranes that built the Titanic, this social club gives no outward evidence of it's storied and welcoming interior. We entered and I was surprised at how busy the establishment was for a Saturday afternoon; a typical, yet very welcoming pub with plush red seating, the odd gambling machine and that one guy at every bar in Ireland that is so blitzed that one of his eyes looks consistently inwards. I was also taken aback by the amount of families with small children in the place.
But tripping over pint-sized Irish children wasn't going to deter me from my mission - to eat dat gravy.
Seeing as it was already 2:30pm and I hadn't eaten since my son woke me up for breakfast at 6am, I was starving. Barely looking at the menu I was sure if I just ordered Fish and Chips I would be just fine, and sure enough, I was. The order was placed with a side of house gravy, and the wheels were set in motion.
Within about 15 minutes our food arrived, and perhaps it was my anxiousness to dig into the gravy, perhaps how hungry I was, but I decided to just dip a fry into that boat of goodness and go to town.
Except you know how when the Terminator dies at the end of Terminator 2 by being dipped into a vat of molten lava? Yeah, that on my tongue.
Oh how it burned.
After the sauce had cooled down a bit, I took another bite and discovered that while it had the starchiness and beefy ruggedness needed after a long day toiling at the docks, what it lacked (in contrast to the lively establishment) was any character. Even though I would say there was about a 70% opacity on the chip, a hearty number by any means, It was an entirely forgettable gravy experience.
In an establishment with such a rich history and filled with such character (and characters), it's unfortunate that the gravy was barely a step above Tesco brand granules slow cooked over the oven while Downton Abbey plays in the background.
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