The List Eating & Drinking Guide 2004/2005

Best Neighbourhood Restaurant Award

Hitlist:  -- The New Bell

Richard & Michelle Heller offer a warm welcome, an easy going atmosphere and some of the most inspired cooking for miles around.

Review

Causewayside may seem a long way to venture if you don’t live on the Southside, but for some inspired cooking, the New Bell is worth the trip. The welcome is warm and the décor, with its mis-matched chairs, white-clothed tables and walls covered with photographs and prints, attractively unpretentious. Richard and Michelle Heller’s aim, in this low-ceilinged restaurant tucked above the popular Old Bell pub, is ‘to provide wonderful food, beautifully presented in a friendly atmosphere’. They succeed admirably. A moist fillet of pan-fried seabass is draped over a generous round of creamy saffron mash, surrounded by a red pepper butter sauce and topped with

grilled asparagus wrapped in salty Parma ham, an addition which complements rather than overwhelms. A starter of haggis crepe with whisky sauce and topped with deep-fried leeks may sound like a tourist-trap of a dish, but is utterly delicious, light and just begs to be mopped up with a chunk of bread. Desserts such as warm chocolate pudding with raspberries and honey mascarpone taste heavenly. The wine list is brief but excellent and the pre-theatre menu (£10.95 for two courses, £13.50 for three) fabulous value.

+ Flavours and textures to thrill the tastebuds

- Heading home out of such a cosy place