So our weekend in Belfast wasn’t supposed to go like this. It was meant to be spontaneous, relaxed and full of Guinness and traditional Irish food like Boxty and stew.

Well, we did try this, I swear.

What every evening in Belfast turned out to be was us walking into every random pub we found, asking for a table and being told they were full or they’d stopped serving food. We didn’t understand. Surely, there weren’t that many tourists visiting Northern Ireland for the long weekend, how were the “traditional” places all full? And why were so many pubs not serving dinner past 7pm?

It was confusing. It still is. I don’t really get it. I’m not going to pretend that I know the ins and outs of Belfast and how this charming, albeit frustrating little city works. All I know for sure is that I needed to give up on the idea of eating traditional food here, and this is going to be my plan for travelling anywhere that isn’t famous for its cuisine. I live in Scotland, right, so everyone from back in Oz always asks me if I’ve tried haggis. And I always answer the same way, ‘uhh no, I haven’t tried haggis, it’s offal and oats, like what is appealing about that?’

Seriously, just because it’s Scotland’s most well-known food doesn’t mean I need to try it to experience Scotland. I mean, I’ve been attacked my midges in the Isle of Skye so intensely that they left me with scars, I’ve celebrated Hogmanay in a local brewery in Glasgow and brought in the new year jigging to The Proclaimers (you know which song), and I’ve seen the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. I even have Harris Tweed DM’s. How can my experience of Scotland be more enhanced by eating Haggis? Well, it can’t be. Plain and simple. I’m not denying it’s nice. I’m sure it tastes disgusting great. But I don’t want to try it and I think that fellow travellers shouldn’t have that pressure to try local foods that don’t seem that appealing or aren’t anything too special.

So back to Belfast.

It was a Saturday evening and like I said, we’d literally been into every pub we could find in search of a hearty meal. I was well and truly sick of walking and needed to eat post-haste. We somehow had ended up stumbling down a little laneway and found ourselves ordering burgers, fries and beers from Pablos, a local burger joint in the Cathedral Quarter.

Now, Pablos doesn’t have much in the way of seating so we got ours to go and continued stumbling up the street and found ourselves outside the Belfast City Hall. On the way, we ate the Pablos ‘Signature Spice’ fries. Thin, McDonald’s style French fries with a salty, chilli, Cajun-y seasoning. Holy fuck balls. Delicious. So goddamn delicious. And seriously the most satisfying fries I’ve ever eaten.

We had hoped to be seated in a cutesy Irish pub, eating a big bowl of stew while downing a few pints of Guinness. Instead, we sat outside on a park bench, on a chilly Saturday eve, sauce running down our chins and hands, unable to speak because the deliciousness of our burgers was word-jumbling. We could still moan with pleasure, but anything else had to wait until after we’d finished licking the sauce from the paper/ our fingers/ our faces.

I mostly live on a vegetarian/ vegan diet but on this particular night, I found that I had unexpectedly ordered a meat burger. I do this from time to time when I feel like I need the extra protein or iron. The ‘La Catedral’ burger was my burger of choice. It had beef. It had cheese. It had pickle. It had mustard. It had mysterious-other-sauce that I can’t quite remember what it was. It had my heart, and it still does. Honestly, there is nothing more satisfying that eating a beef burger to a ravenous veggie, who has been eating nothing but salads, falafels and soups for the past 6 months.

I don’t have photos of my burger or the fries. To be honest, I’m not going to be that kind of blogger. I am usually so excited by my food that I have to stuff my face immediately upon receiving it (sorry people, I am actually taken).

We ended our evening with a trip to the Botanic Gardens, where we strolled around and then went back to our Airbnb where we drank our beers in bed and passed out in happy-drunky-meaty-comas.

It was a brilliant evening where rejection from mainstream eateries worked in our favour. I realised on this night that searching for traditional foods in certain places can be pointless. If you’re in the UK and you want traditional English, Scottish or Irish food, bear in mind that these places are not famous for their fabulously-sophisticated cuisines. Expect pies, roasts, fish and chips and bangers and mash, of varying quality. We’re not in France or Italy here. It’s the UK. Things are usually brown and/or soft.

I think what’s better though is to just find somewhere good. Somewhere that’s fresh and has quality ingredients. Don’t settle for the brown/soft things just because you want something traditional. You can do so much better.

Just trying to curb your enthusiasm, pals.