That’s the way to do it!

Dutchman, Joery Castel , brought his own culinary style with him when he arrived here from Holland in 2008. Now his thriving little Bangor eatery has become the first restaurant in NI to be listed in the Sunday Times’ Top 100 ranking…

Since Joery Castel arrived in Ireland from his native Holland 15 years ago, he hasn’t really put a foot wrong.

And now The Boathouse – the eclectic little restaurant which he and his brother, Jasper, have run on the seafront in Bangor since 2008 – has been ranked at number 50 in the Sunday Times Top 100 UK Restaurants – the first time that a venue in Northern Ireland has featured on the list.

For 42-year-old Joery – who also recently lifted the Best Restaurant title at the prestigious Irish Restaurant Awards – it’s an affirmation of all the hard work he and Jasper and the small team at The Boathouse has put in:

“It’s a really great achievement,” he told LCN recently. “I’ve been lucky to work with some really talented chefs and I think this is a big pat on the shoulder for everyone that works with us.”

Joery first came to Ireland at the turn of the millennium to work in the kitchens at Co. Monaghan’s exclusive Castle Leslie estate. His brother, Jasper was involved in restaurant management back in Holland at the time, but, increasingly disillusioned by what he saw as a lack of challenge in his work, he eventually joined Joery in Ireland in 2005.

The Boathouse opened seven years ago in premises on the seafront that had once been the harbour master’s office before becoming home, for many years, to Bangor’s lifeboat. Before Joery and Jasper took it on, Stephen Jeffers had been running it as a restaurant.

“There are quite a few good restaurants about now, but when we opened, you could see where the good chefs were coming from, they were Robbie Millar chefs or Paul Rankin chefs and so on. You could tell from the food they were cooking where they had come from,” recalls Joery.

“We had been trained in a different style of food in Holland and I think that really set us aside from day one. It’s evolved from a bistro-orientated style, four things on a plate, meat, potatoes, vegetables and sauce, into a more refined style and dining experience with different textures and flavours to the food. I think my own palette has opened up more as well. I can tell better which flavours work together and which don’t.”

The Boathouse offers an eclectic mix of traditional European cuisine – its style was once described by one of Joery’s friends as “chaotic”. Seafood dominates as you might expect with fresh produce pulled from the icy waters of the Atlantic, Lough Neagh or Carlingford. But meat, game and poultry are well represented too and as with most responsible restaurateurs these days, supplies are locally sourced where possible.

Joery, who also works as a consultant on a number of other restaurant projects around the country, believes that the sector is developing in the right direction:

“There has been a string of better quality restaurants opening up or development themselves further and some very good chefs are emerging, such as Danni Barry [Eipic] and Eddie Atwell at Ardtara House,” he adds. “These chefs have been working in England but have decided to get back to their roots here and have brought their experience and their knowledge back here with them, so the trade is profiting from that. One of my own chefs, Glenn Devine, worked at Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner, so we learn from him and that’s how you get better as a chef yourself.”

Joery and Jasper have no immediate plans for change at The Boathouse despite its recent success:

“The only thing that’s likely to change now is the pressure in my head,” jokes Joery. “I think that people’s expectations now will be a little higher than they used to be…but hopefully we’ll enjoy a lot of additional business as a result of our success. We have a new chef started with us, Vinny McCrory, who is just back from the US after eight years there. Vinny is very talented and you’re only as good as your staff, so the priority now is to ensure that the team we have stays at the same level…They are very talented and motivated and I have great faith in them. The ideas that we’ve had and the input that they have given to us is what has put us onto the Sunday Times list.”