Balloo House,
1 Comber Road,
Killinchy,
Co Down,
BT23 6PA.
028 9754 1210
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WE'RE getting closer. Last time, Eating Out was down by the water, at Cargo By Vertigo in the Titanic quarter, with the Harland & Wolff cranes looming overhead and the wind coming off Belfast Lough in mercifully benign mood.
Next time, Eating Out will be firmly inside. Four actual walls with a ceiling and everything. No heating from a garden centre. No need to check the weather.
This time, we're somewhere in between, although a lot closer to where we'll be next time than we were last time, both geographically and philosophically.
We're next door. Actually, not even that far.
Next time we'll be at Overwood, above Balloo House in Killinchy, and normally its terrace is all sofas and armchairs around a handsome wood-burning fire, the perfect spot to sip an on-the-money cocktail as the wafts from the kitchen and the descriptions on the menu make your dinner choice as difficult as you'll find anywhere.
Today, the sofas have been cleared out with tables and chairs surrounding the heat source - if it's from a garden centre it's from the fanciest one you've ever seen - cranked up to 11 to keep things comfortable as the wind rattles the surrounding plexiglass screens.
While we are eating on the 'Overwood terrace', the menu is a snapshot of Balloo House downstairs.
It's gastropub with a swagger and because it's Sunday it's gastropub with Yorkshire puddings too.
As well as those specials of roast beef, lamb and chicken, there's big chunky bowls of soup and mussels, pork cheeks, a steak with all the bits and pieces, an awfully serious burger.
A seafood platter comes out to start, a table filler of a thing, maybe a floor filler too as it runs through the greatest hits you'd expect, with a few pleasing remixes.
The prawn cocktail is a stone cold classic, with the prawns piled high on a piece of crisp iceberg, with just the right sweet-sour balance coming off the Marie Rose sauce.
Flecks of crabmeat bound with a bright mayonnaise, shot through with herbs but still all delicate shellfish flavour, sit on top of crisp toast, while pearls of barley add ballast and turn the mussels in their broth into a soup of distinction.
Bringing the fried perspective any self-respecting seafood platter needs are crunchy lengths of whitebait and salt and chilli squid, ready to be dredged through more of that Marie Rose and a tartare sauce heavy with a rubble of gherkins and capers.
The roast is blush pink slices of sirloin, falling apart with ease but packing a deeply beefy whack, along with a warehouse full of all the trimmings: a crisp-edged pillow of Yorkshire pudding; roast potatoes in the same spirit; great wodges of roast carrot; butter smooth mash; the sort of cauliflower cheese you want to tell your problems too; red cabbage to cut through everything and keep you from rolling off the terrace and testing the integrity of that plexiglass. It's a great, generous feast.
A bit more acidity somewhere, whether in the fragrant citrus butter sauce or the sweet pickled girolles, was the only missing piece on the plate of hake under a sheet of spiced fennel sausage and summer duvet of herb breadcrumbs.
That said, by the end the asparagus was being used along with the mash as a makeshift mop to make sure nothing stayed on the plate.
All the flavours did their bit in the passion fruit cheesecake, with mango from the sorbet the most assertive, slicing against the creamy sweetness, but as fresh and pleasant it was it was a bantamweight compared to the chocolate ale cake - packing concussive punches of flavour while dancing round the ring perfectly balanced.
The sweet sponge was covered in a mousse of heady malty bitterness. The brown butter biscuit snapped, then melted, then disappeared.
Maybe on the wind rattling the surroundings. The perfect excuse to step inside. Next time.
THE BILL
Seafood platter £20
Sunday lunch £18
Hake £17.50
Passion fruit cheesecake £7.50
Chocolate ale cake £7.50
Senorita cocktail £9
Elderflower tonic £3
Americano x2 £6
Total £88.50
