Paul Rankin's Rain City Café is popular, if unexciting, writes Tom Doorley
You can tell a lot about a restaurant from the state of its lemon tart. Essentially, if it suffers from soggy bottom there's a fair chance that nobody is checking the quality of the food before it hits the table. If, on the other hand, the tart's shell is crisp and fresh, this suggests that they care about such things. In a restaurant called Rain City it could, of course, be just irony, but this one was soggy.
The core idea here sounds good: decent, eclectic food in an informal setting and at keen prices. But eclectic as the menu undoubtedly is, it didn't quite grab me by the lapels. There are pizzas, including chicken and pesto, which I'm sure is fine if you like that kind of thing. There are dry-aged steaks, an Angus burger, and various pastas including "chicken bolognese with mushrooms, marjoram and spaghetti". There is even a "spicy aubergine and tomato bolognese"; both of these will come as news to the residents of Bologna.
The staff were friendly and helpful, the bar does a huge range of cocktails and also serves proper beers such as Samuel Adams and Hoegaarden, and the place was packed. Service was pleasant, but the pace was noticeably slow, which suggests that the kitchen was under pressure.
Soup is offered in a choice of two measures - the cup or the bowl - and our bowl of pepper and tomato soup was large and deep, except perhaps in terms of flavour. I expected a smoky sweetness from the pepper element but, instead, the dominant flavour was of basil, the herb that has taken over the entire country. As soup goes, it was decent enough and it came with plenty of crusty Roscoff bread. It would make a perfectly adequate lunch.
The other food that has colonised the land is goats' cheese. Indeed, there are still some restaurants where you can't help getting the impression that goats' cheese is still regarded as a little daring.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with using the mass-produced French chèvre log rather than farmhouse versions such as Ardsallagh and Mine Gabhar. It's cheaper, and blander and therefore more acceptable, perhaps, to the average punter. I only wish that more restaurants knew how to treat it. A slice of chèvre log needs to be grilled or baked before it's transformed from something resembling Plasticine to the warm, soft, vaguely pungent substance which is actually pleasant to eat.
Herbed goats' cheese with tapenade, roast peppers and crostini seemed, at first, to have been cooked adequately, but the interior was still at the chilled Plasticine stage. The slivered peppers were sweet and smoky, and the tapenade was tangy with black olives and suitably fishy with anchovies. The crostini turned out to be thin toast.
Fish and chips was not bad: cod fillet in breadcrumbs, perhaps verging on well done, with large, crisp chips and a minute serving of unmemorable tartare sauce. What lifted this dish to a higher level, however, were the mushy peas, spiked with lots of lemon juice and, I think, fresh herbs.
Crispy duck leg confit was undoubtedly duck, certainly a leg (albeit from a very small duck) but it could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called crispy. The whole point of this dish is that crisp skin encases meltingly tender flesh that has been slowly simmered in duck fat. This version had flabby, greasy skin sitting loosely on top of greasy meat.
The lack of crispness seemed to be a theme. The only crunch in the accompanying combination of sauté potatoes, mushrooms and French beans came from the beans.
The aforementioned lemon tart, our only dessert, was over-sweet too. One double espresso, however, was first-rate. With two soft drinks, two glasses of Santa Digna Sauvignon Blanc and one of Thomas Mitchell Marsanne, a tea, and a small bottle of mineral water, the bill came to £49.55.
Rain City Café and Grill, 33-35 Malone Road, Belfast BT9 6RU (048-90682929). A second Rain City Café opens on Monday at Junction One International Shopping Outlet Village, Ballymena Road, Antrim (048-94427959)