The Grateful Bread,
@ Boundary Brewing,
Portview Trade Centre,
310 Newtownards Road,
Belfast,
BT4 1HE
Instagram @thegratefulbread1
Check out these hilarious pun-filled takeaway names that will have you choking on your chips – with laughter...
OK, maybe not, but I have to admit that every time an article headlined with something like that pops up while scrolling, it’s difficult not to take the click bait. Who doesn’t like a bit of solid punwork? And how else would you find out that if you fancy a kebab in Bristol one of your options is Jason Donervan?
That’s an all-timer, with most stretching the wordplay to its limits or thinking they’re the first place to realise that ‘cod’ sounds an awful lot like ‘god’.
The Grateful Bread is a good one. Simple, classy, not trying too hard, getting it just right.
Owned and operated by Justin Nicholl and Elena Martin, it began in 2016 as a micro-bakery and was previously a social enterprise, running pop-up bakery/cafe events and supplying some cafes and shops with wholesale bread and cakes.
As Covid restrictions relaxed in 2021 they took up an invitation from then-owner of the American Bar Pedro Donald to take over the kitchen of the Sailortown venue. The result was some of the best food to be found in any pub in Belfast and in June they opened the shutters on their truck parked up outside Boundary Brewing’s taproom in the east of the city four days a week.
The menu changes regularly, and since our visit it’s featured things like arancini, a fish bap with tartare sauce, and dahl with carrot pickle and flatbread. This particular day, everything on the blackboard propped against the side of the truck looks like it’s worth having, so it’s had. Apart from the garlic and parmesan fries, because there are more than enough of those hot, crisp, sticks of spud with just about everything else.
Though not the vegetable goyza – nubbly, fried dumplings jammed with carrots, edamame beans and the like, and draped in a couple of sweetly roasted scallions. Lovely as they are, they’re sent through the roof by the dipping sauce, an umami haymaker of soy and sesame with a jab of chilli.
Thick oblongs of pork belly, topped with a sheet of Japanese furikake seasoning, come on wooden skewers, to be gnawed at like wonderfully fat-lined meaty lollipops, a little salad of leaves, tomatoes and onions adding a bit of crunch and reassurance that you’re somewhere in the vicinity of your five-a-day.
The roast carrot and smoked tofu burger will definitely help get you there, the burnished patty glowing orange, though it’s the flecks of pearly tofu that keep the thing on track, the wispy smokiness adding the interest needed as you munch through a veggie burger that’s really worth the effort.
The brisket and the chilli that tops a copious portion of those fries collapses like a Tory majority into a rich sauce studded with kidney beans. It’s chilli con serious carne, with a fresh burst from a tomato salsa topping and a hefty dose of melty cheese. Your fork will love you forever for letting it get stuck into this.
Though the cutlery is missing out on the best thing out of everything – an unimpeachable grilled cheese sandwich.
It comes, like the carrot burger, with a fistful of those fries and is all but hidden under a shroud of cheese. It’s all the crispy bits you get milling around the edges of the best sort of toastie, invited to become the centre of attention.
The bread it clings to is perfect for this sort of thing: both making a grilled cheese sandwich and stuffing one’s face with it.
A couple of sweet wedges provide dessert, one a good Basque cheesecake that could probably do with its top more severely blackened in the style you expect from this recently ubiquitous dessert.
The other, better, offering is a flourless chocolate cake that’s just one big triangular cocoa bomb of a chocolate truffle. A dollop of cream calms it down a little but just to the point where you’re ready to take another chocolate smack in the chops.
Simple, classy, not trying too hard, getting it just right. That’s The Grateful Bread.
The bill
- Vegetable goyza £8
- Pork belly skewers £8
- Grilled cheese sandwich £8
- Chilli brisket fries £10
- Roast carrot and smoked tofu burger £10
- Basque cheesecake £4
- Flourless chocolate cake £4
