Running a restaurant is like managing a football team, according to Paul Rankin. Along with his wife, Jeanne, he is credited with introducing Belfast to top cuisine, with the opening of Roscoff's in 1989 when little was on offer for the discerning diner.

"Sometimes you have magnificent individuals, sometimes you have a terrific captain and, in me, you have a sort of player manager. You can pick up injuries, have bad days and personnel changes but, at the end of the day, you're still a team at the top end of the table," he says.

Last year, it appeared Roscoff's had fallen from grace when it lost the Michelin star rating it first brought to Northern Ireland and retained for eight years. Nine months later, the Rankins closed Roscoff's and transformed the premises on Shaftesbury Square into the brasserie Cayenne.

The hip decor and reasonably priced dishes offered by Cayenne are pitched at the younger set but it attracts a mixed clientele. "We're still very serious about the food that we do. It's basically the same quality as Roscoff's but the dishes are just stripped back a bit, simpler and a little more playful."

Mr Rankin insists losing the star doesn't means relegation from the premier league.

"We could have fought to get it back but we had already decided to move Roscoff's and do something new here," he says. "I was initially not upset by it because we were going in a new direction . . . but then it did start to hurt because the media made such a big thing out of it."

He admits feeling "disillusioned" with the Michelin guide for rewarding restaurants he believes effectively adopt cloning techniques to achieve success.

"I look at some of the restaurants and I think `if that's Michelin star, I don't want to go there'. That prissy, pretentious food can go and get stuffed. Food is a natural thing. I think sometimes we try to turn it into some high-brow art form and that's when it all goes wrong."

He speculates demand in the North is not sufficient to support another high class restaurant with Deane's in Belfast and Shanks in Bangor now also sporting the Michelin star. A host of mid-priced alternatives have also sprung up.

He confirms Dublin has been considered for a future relocation, when the time is right, of Roscoff's. "I certainly believe it would work in Dublin because it has that type of clientele."

Mr Rankin is concentrating on other opportunities accruing from the celebrity status awarded to the couple back in the early 1990s when they became familiar faces on television cookery programmes.

They starred in three series of Gourmet Ireland aired on RTE and around the world, with spin-off recipe books. A new series of The Rankin Challenge will hit our screens early next year on the BBC. "It's been a while since we've done one [a series] and, if nothing else, it's good craic," he says.

The emergence of cafe society in the North has provided another opportunity. For the past five years, Mr Rankin has been a partner in two Roscoff cafes and a bakery with former employee Ms Gillian Hayes. A third will open in Belfast next year.

Mr Rankin admits expansion of the company is being handled "carefully" because sustained growth is not a certainty.

"There's been this whole speculation about Belfast - are we going to go with a bang and all of a sudden be like a mini-Dublin growing at the same rate or is there going to be slow growth? I don't believe we have the fast boat, we're still up and down," he says.

However, expansion of the business is a must in order to retain good staff. The company employs 70 people. "Quite often staff are looking for promotions and increased responsibility. You're going to lose them if you don't grow. "One of the problems we have as a growing company is to get the management structure right underneath everything else that's happening. Because, to go from a small hands-on company to a company with a decent management structure, that is really crucial and a difficult jump for any company, no matter what business you are in."

The Rankins have also ventured beyond the catering business and, two years ago, entered the retail food industry. The Gourmet Ireland gift hamper range is available all year but offers an extended selection at Christmas.

"We do have some really wonderful produce in this country and Ireland in itself is a wonderful brand. But we have a struggling food industry as far as recognition in Europe or worldwide is concerned and I think it is because we don't have enough world-class produce out there."

He wants to cultivate "the artisan-type product - Irish products that we can be really proud of and sell into stores like Harrods".

Eighty per cent of the produce contained in the hampers originates in the Republic with 20 per cent originating in the North and, Mr Rankin says, they are pleased with the positive feedback from stores and buyers. "The whole retail food industry is so different from the restaurant game that we've found it incredibly difficult. At the same time, we feel we're getting there and we're making progress," he says. Next year the hampers will sell though the UK Internet portal iloveyou.com.

"They looked at companies throughout the UK but picked our hampers . . . I think it's a real coup that an Irish hamper company has been chosen for something like this."

The development of catering and the retail food industry is a response to the demands of an increasingly sophisticated consumer. "We're so much further on in relation to food than we were even five years ago.

"What the customer is demanding - in supermarkets, in delicatessens, in restaurants - to me it is mind boggling. As someone with a passion for food, I welcome the trend but, of course, as a businessman I will always be looking for ways to capitalise on it."