Fontana, 61 High Street, Holywood, Co Down, BT18 9AE.
fontanarestaurant.co.uk
Tel: 028 9039 7977
YOU can have a great meal anywhere, but the last couple of mine to feature on this page weren’t a deliberate effort to prove this point.
They just happened to be at places without tablecloths. Or tables, for that matter.
Visits first to Meat & Mo in west Belfast then the Grateful Bread in the east of the city meant takeaway containers, paper napkins and disposable – but environmentally conscious – cutlery. One was a shopfront and the other was a food truck. And utterly fantastic they both were too.
But sometimes you don’t just want to sit-in rather than take-away – you want to sit-in somewhere that might flirt with being a wee bit fancy. Basically, you want a tablecloth.
Read more:
Fontana has tablecloths, which aren’t always the mark of fanciness, nor indeed quality, but the long-established restaurant on Holywood’s High Street doesn’t rely on the (very smart) furnishings to get across what it’s trying to do.
Fontana is the beloved neighbourhood spot that’s also going to attract visitors from further afield, maybe thanks to its mention in the Michelin Guide. It’s the sort of place that will get Pierce Brosnan through the door if he’s filming in town, and will be on the shortlist for an occasion when you want to step things up a little, or spoil yourself for lunch when you’ve nowhere to get back to any time soon.
That feels like a good excuse for the set menu of £32.50 for three courses, embellished with a few additions like a little bowl of radishes, butter and salt. Anywhere that serves this as a snack is somewhere that knows what it’s doing.
You could mindlessly munch away on these things until the cows come home – or the ham hock arrives.
It’s a plate full of intent. With all the tricks and flicks of Rhys McClenaghan on his pommel horse built on the rock-solid display of mind-boggling strength of, well, Rhys McClenaghan on his pommel horse.
A tight cylinder of well-seasoned meat breaks apart nicely to get mixed up with the bits and bobs it comes with. A creamy pistachio pave sitting on a nubbly dukkah of the pale green nut, little blobs of fresh cucumber gel and an unfortunately solitary segment of excellent pickled orange, along with a slab of grilled bread, make for a starter you’ll be thinking about for a while.
They are lots of lovely things lurking in a bowl of leaves: slivers of fennel and chicory, kohlrabi and pickled shallot all offer spiky contrast and permission to shovel up forkfuls of hazelnuts and a cracking hard sheep’s cheese and call it a salad.
There are hiccups in the main courses, including a disconnect between what’s on the menu and what hits the table. Regular chard rather than cavolo nero comes with the chicken breast. That can happen but, more jarringly, the almond, beetroot and rosemary polenta crisp promised with the duck are all absent in favour of the same veg garnish as the chicken – chard, longstem broccoli and peas. It’s all verdantly, squeakily fresh and good, but should have been explained.
The main event of the plate – huge wedges of blush-pink duck breast with a deep port sauce, sweet fig and bitter leaves of radicchio do make up for it.
A smashing black sesame seed yogurt and celeriac terrine have a harder job compensating for the lack of crispy skin on the chicken breast across the table, but just about manage it. A bowl of glistening, herb-flecked crushed baby spuds bolster the argument.
Desserts, thankfully, succeed without question.
The floral softness of the elderflower panna cotta is only beaten by its exemplary wobble, barely holding itself together on the plate and melting away into heady delight in the mouth.
Taking a different approach is the massive bear hug of an apple crumble, sweet and sharp and soft and sticky and crunchy in all the right places.
Main course issues aside, Fontana itself is still one of those right places over 25 years since it first opened. Those tablecloths are just a bonus.
THE BILL
- Set menu x2 £65
- Radishes £4
- Herb crushed potatoes £5.50
- French Martini £10.95
- San Pellegrino orange £2.95
- Americano x 2 £6.40
