Worth the wait

The Waterworths may have waited more than 12 years to unveil their ultimate vision for a property on Donaghadee seafront which they bought in 2002 – but it’s been well worth the wait!

Harbour and Company is an eye-catching new 70-seater restaurant in Donaghadee and it replaces the Ocean Drive bar which traded successfully in the prime seafront location for many years.

Following a fresh investment of around £750,000, the Waterworth family has created a bright, contemporary new eatery with unequalled panoramic views across Donaghadee harbour.

You’ll see from our images that Harbour and Company is a bold departure from the more traditional approach that the family took in their award-winning Pier 36 restaurant – which is just four doors along the seafront from the new venue – but Lewis Waterworth told LCN that the family felt the time was right for this new investment:

“We built Pier 36 in 1999 and it was of its time,” he explained. “Pier 36 is still doing very well for us, but it’s more of a traditional offering these days. Harbour and Company is a modern restaurant that is also of its time and it’s different in quite a number of ways.”

One of those points of difference involves an ‘adults only’ policy – children under the age of 14 aren’t admitted to the restaurant – in a move that’s designed to create a relaxing and mature dining environment:

“We took that decision because we wanted a modern, adult restaurant,” Lewis added. “Our other restaurant does very well catering for families and there are a number of other excellent family restaurants in the area with which we don’t want to compete, we wanted this to be something different. The rule applies to a couple of my own children as well, but it’s part of what we wanted to achieve with Harbour and Company and our customers have embraced it.”

They’re also chasing differentiation in the kitchen with a new wood-fired grill:

“This is a really big deal. The new grill uses kiln-dried wood and pretty much everything that we cook is done on there,” added Lewis, who explained that they’d decided to add the grill after his father, Denis, saw one in operation at a restaurant in Portugal.

“It just gives food an incredible flavour,” he went on. “It smells great and it gives us that vital point of differentiation. We’ll still be using the same great cuts of meat that Pier 36 is famous for but the new approach to cooking in Harbour and Company is going down very well.”

Harbour and Company has a bold, modern new look but it’s clear from the pictures that the emphasis is squarely on the big picture windows and the striking seafront vistas that they offer:

“Customers are either looking out over the harbour or they’re looking back into the open kitchen where there’s an element of theatre going on for them,” explained Lewis, who runs the business alongside brother, Jody and his parents, Denis and Margaret. “Although Northern Ireland has some fabulous coastline, we don’t think that there are many restaurants that actually try to take advantage of that.

Harbour and Company opened at the end of June and Lewis reported that feedback so far has been “fantastic”. He hopes that an advertising billboard – due to be erected in Belfast next month – will help further boost trade at the new venture.

“We’ve hit the ground running,” he added. “We’ve brought in an excellent team of staff, including a lot of the management from Pier 36 and our new head chef, Ricky Madden, who has worked for us in the past…Our focus now is just to consolidate our trade in both venues, continue to do well and hopefully, introduce some new customers to our offering.”