Buba,
St Anne's Square,
Belfast,
BT1 2LR.
028 9568 0162
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ON one level, it's disappointing that Buba has found the need to add a subtitle that completely changes the nature of the restaurant in St Anne's Square in Belfast.
What was once brilliant eastern Mediterranean and north African small and a-bit-bigger plates is now, officially, "Burgers & Bits".
It's disappointing because nowhere in the city – or beyond – was really doing what Buba used to do and few were doing whatever they did as well as Buba. An awful lot of places do burgers and bits.
Owner Tony O'Neill's move has come because he really had no choice. The relentlessly crushing economic pressures restaurants and the rest of us are facing meant it just wasn't viable for Buba to continue the way it used to.
Recovering after the pandemic was tough enough but owning two restaurants across from each other – the excellent Coppi is a few steps away – meant competing for the much the same clientele with lunchtime trade all but disappearing in the new world of working from home.
With an eye towards the hard-to-miss arrival of 15,000 students with the huge new Ulster University campus on its doorstep, Buba now does burgers. And bits. And does them very well.
So, while you can lament something unique making way for another burger 'joint' – hate that word – it's far better than another empty unit and more jobs disappearing. And not only that, if something's good then that's reason enough to be happy it's there.
Buba is good and it's different enough from the other – many of them excellent – burger offerings nearby to offer something if not unique then certainly distinct.
The burgers themselves are thick, flame-grilled beauties, in themselves a departure from the fashion of smashed, flat-top cooked patties.
The Buba Licious comes with a nod to Buba's former self, with spiced chunks of lamb kofta on top of the beef, the sort of sweet, slightly smoky sauce you'd find dripping from the very best of kebabs, chilli jam and pickled jalapenos.
It's a fiery, sloppy delight, as is the behemoth of a fried chicken burger – crunchy and juicy in all the right places, with a similarly well-executed satay sauce and a fresh kimchi slaw.
As another point of contrast Buba has gone all in on tater tots, those peculiarly American little cubes of fried-until-golden grated spuds.
Here they 'dirty' them - the sort of stuff chips have been having to deal with for years – and the 'pulled' mushroom, truffle aioli, parmesan and fried sage basket of everything you could ever ask for is reason enough for Buba to have made its left turn.
Corn 'ribs' – I may be going for an inverted comma record here but that really says more about grumpy old me than Buba or its menu – are just quarters from a corn on the cob that have been split lengthways. But they're fantastic, all charred up and licked with a spiky, fresh chimichurri salt. Between these and the burgers, napkins will be needed.
Dessert was a lemon vegan cheesecake – you honestly wouldn't know the difference, the highest of compliments – or a warm, crisp-edged, gooey-centred cookie topped with bits of chocolate, marshmallow, fudge and cream. As lovely as the cheesecake was, seriously, what do you think?
There's more than burgers, with steak, chicken and cauliflower sharing space on the grill, while they still shake up a serious cocktail and carry a short wine list with only the fizz hitting £30 a bottle.
Only towards the end of the meal – and after taking a moment to consider whether getting another burger as a pre-dessert might be bit much – did I realise I had missed an opportunity to try something else a little different from the burger norm on the menu.
A couple came with sauce for dunking the whole lot in to. So, the next night a short walk from the office became a dinner of the Pepper Dipper, a cheeseburger topped with crispy onion and plunged headlong into a creamy peppercorn sauce.
It was collected from a different crew of efficient, helpful staff, buzzing round a packed house, clearly happy to be trying what Buba does now. As well they should be.
THE BILL
Corn ribs £6.50
Buba Licious burger £12
Nutty Chick burger £11
Pulled mushroom dirty tots £7.50
Cookie Chaos £6
Vegan cheesecake £5
Flat White Martini £9.50
Diet Coke £2.50
Total £60
