Paul Rankin

Archive - all the best places to eat, shop and stay in Ireland. A local guide to local places.

Paul Rankin seems so stranded in all manner of curious places these days – in daytime television; in the courtrooms; in the print media – that an awful lot of people probably don't associate him with a simple, uncontrovertable fact: he is the greatest chef ever to have come out of Northern Ireland. Others may have played a more important role in the food culture of the North, but Rankin was the original star – glimmering; brilliant; extravagantly gifted; inspirational. To walk into Roscoff in Belfast  in the early 1990s was to enter a restaurant that Ireland – and not just Northern Ireland – had never seen the like of. Such style in the room, the staff, the food on the plate. Such style seemingly in the very air of this room! Rankin gathered the greatest alumni of any Irish restaurant around him in the kitchen and out at front of house, and he was unstoppable, every plate seemingly better than the last, every detail tuned like a piece of pristine horlogerie. For many people, Roscoff was the greatest restaurant of their life.

The business grew steadily at first – there was a fine bakery, and some fine food in an hotel dining room – and then quickly, with a range of cafés and branded products, and lots of media appearances and books, including one great book, “Hot Food”, which was unluckily lost amidst the melée of attention that surrounded Rankin. Even before the downturn, the business was scarcely sustainable, and it rapidly fell asunder. Rankin has kept the original Roscoff, now switched in style and mood to the funky Cayenne. His career has had the Icarus arc which seems to beset successful people from Northern Ireland – the rapid ascent; the even more rapid descent – but none can deny that Rankin gave us a different – and a better – air to breath. All we had to do was to walk through the smoky glass doors of Roscoff on Shatesbury Square, and we were transported to a better place. All around him in the early days there were people who thought they were engaging in revolutionary behaviour and tactics. They were wrong. Working in his kitchen, Paul Rankin was the original, archetypal, revolutionary.

Cayenne, 7 Ascot House, Shaftesbury Square, Belfast, Northern Ireland,
028 9033 1532
www.rankingroup.co.uk