We Tried Something New: Going To One New Restaurant A Month.

Scott and I have always connected over food, it’s one of favourite things to do for a date, and we always ended up going to the same places for brunches and dinners, so we decided as a fun experiment towards the end of the year of 2021 for the year of 2022, we would try at least one new restaurant or café each month in order to see more of what Belfast and the outskirts had to be offer.

Did we complete our resolution?

We did! We went to twelve new (to us) places and while they weren’t all fantastic, we’re still glad to those that we hadn’t tried before, because you won’t know until you try, right? I’m not going to talk about every place but I wanted to choose a few of my favourites, because I really loved them that much.

Lynchpin, Holywood.

(This is “The Hash” that I talk about below, it’s something I would never ordinarily go for, but it’s now become one of my favourite meals on the menu, absolutely delicious!)

This treat of a place only opened in September 2021 and I couldn’t have been more thrilled when I finally got to visit and I’ve been back several more times. It’s all plant-based and its menu isn’t like other vegan places I’ve been to and that’s what I love about it. My favourite meal is called “The Hash” which consists of two hash brown balls, on top of a plate of hummus, seeds and pickled vegetables. It’s not something I would have ever picked out before but it’s made me appreciate not just going for something I automatically know. Also, their cakes and buns are to DIE for, they’re incredible and Lynchpin is one hundred percent my favourite place I’ve discovered last year.

Kamakura Sushi and Ramen Japanese Restaurant, Belfast.

(Not the best lighting I’ll admit, but not every single meal has to be the perfect Instagram image, right?)

Admittedly, the closest thing I have ever tired to Asian food is Wagamama, and while I absolutely LOVE Wagamama, I wanted to try out something more authentic. Kamakura is a lovely little place that is cosy, warm and is the perfect little spot for either a friend date or a date night with your significant other (I’ve done both!) It tends to be quite busy and because it is smaller than most restaurants, it’s advised to book in advance. I have tried sushi (plant-based sushi) for the first time while I was there, and alongside their Katsu curry, it was such a lovely experience.

Bare Bun, Belfast.

(Normally photographs never do food justice, but I feel like you can see the true representation of the portion sizes I talk about below. Insane!)

This vegan junk food joint on the Lisburn Road had only been open since March of last year and while it took us a little time to get over to it, it was well worth the wait. VEGAN. JUNK FOOD. Need I say more? It was absolutely delicious and Belfast has really upped its game recently in terms of vegan burgers and chips, but without a doubt, this one is the best of the best. The portion sizes were massive and we both ended taking some home with us too, well worth every penny spent. (Disappointingly, Bare Bun shut its doors this year, but I still wanted to give it a mention because I was so impressed with it and I really hope we see it pop up somewhere really really soon!)

Are we still continuing it this year?

Absolutely! We already had a few places noted down at the end of last year to go to this year, and we’ll continue to go back to those places that we fell in love with. If you have another suggestions of where we should go, let me know over on my socials.

The main objective we took away from this is that we need to not always say “Well have to go there sometime” because there were one or two places that only opened within the last year that has sadly closed already and we didn’t get the chance to try them out. Due to the cost of living, businesses are being hit more than ever and if we don’t support our local businesses that we want to thrive, whenever we can and we are financially able to, we’ll be saying goodbye to them before we even get the chance to say hello.

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I know that resolutions can often be looked down upon or can be made to seem quite silly but personally, this was such a nice resolution for Scott and I to take on together. It got us out on little brunches and even a few date nights, and it let us explore a few more restaurants around us that we always meant to go to, and now it gives us more options that we automatically know “We loved this place last time, let’s go there!”.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a great day! 🍔