I feel like when I was growing up in Belfast, a carvery was quite a common thing that you could go to on a Sunday for a nice roast dinner. But recently it seems like a bit of a struggle to find one.
While it is fairly easy to find a roast dinner in restaurants across Belfast and beyond, I feel like carverys are few and far between.
After asking Google for different places in the city where I could find a carvery to take some friends who were visiting, we noticed Neill's Hill on the Newtownards Road in Ballyhackamore kept popping up and having had a nice meal there before thought we would give it a go.
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They were visiting from England where there are dedicated carvery restaurants everywhere. They are able to get one every day of the week - as easy as going to the chippy.
Upon arrival to Neill's Hill, I quickly noticed that the 'kitchen carvery' listed on the online menu wasn't going to be what we expected as the restaurant was set up as normal, for a regular dinner service.
As we knew the restaurant had been good before we didn't leave to try and find a traditional carvery and were very glad at that because we ended up having quite a unique but wonderful meal.
The kitchen carvery was essentially a carvery dinner but prepared in the kitchen for your table without you having to line up with your plate and help yourself.
It came to us on a warm white tray with a selection of turkey, beef and pork alongside roasties, mash, carrot and turnip mash, broccoli, Yorkshire pudding and stuffing, with two trays being more than enough to share for four people.
The food itself was wonderfully cooked with each of the meats being cooked to our liking and going well with the great selections of vegetables it came with. The gravy that came with it was also particularly good with a very rich flavour.
Throughout our meal the staff were very friendly and helpful and the restaurant had a lovely atmosphere with lots of people enjoying a nice Sunday dinner. To finish things off, our group shared two desserts, the sticky toffee pudding and the meringue. Both went down as well as the dinner had, and were the perfect way to finish a great meal.
While the carvery wasn't quite what we thought it was going to be, I am glad that we chose to go to Neill's Hill as it was one of the nicest roast dinners that I have had in a long time.
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English (United States) ·