Good morning, guys.
Welcome back to Vagabrothers.
It's day 5 of our road trip through Northern Ireland,
and right now we're in Belfast.
It's a beautiful day here in the capital
of Northern Ireland.
We have a fun day ahead of us, and
we're starting off with breakfast.
It is a beautiful morning here in Belfast.
This city is gorgeous.
It's got that beautiful Victorian architecture
I've seen in Liverpool or Glasgow;
City Hall right behind us.
It's an exact replica in German, South Africa.
It's from that time period.
All these cities were trading with each other,
and you can kind of see those influences
in the buildings around us. It's cool.
All right guys.
We've just got to St. George's Market,
and I'm excited because I've walked in here
and the whole building,
the top of it, is just filled with
smoke of bacon and sausages.
We are in St. George's Market.
This is kind of the food and drink pub of Belfast.
And this is where I would come
on a Sunday morning and
buy some stuff to make for dinner
and also get a really good breakfast.
Oh wow.
What do we have here?
This is our traditional extra fry.
We have our soda bread, potato bread.
We have our pork adult sausages,
smoked bacon, vegetable roe,
black pudding and tomato.
That was an award winning fry for a reason
All the ingredients come from here in the market.
We're going to go check out some
of the stands here that provide
this restaurant, along with many others,
with the ingredients they need to make good food.
These guys have been
blending tea here for about 11 years.
And they started off selling here in the market.
They sold 118 pounds in their first day.
And last year, a cup of Suki tea has been
drunk every second of every minute
of every day.
So they're doing really well.
This is SD Bells.
They're Ireland's oldest coffee roaster.
They've been roasting coffee since 1887,
the year before Belfast became a city.
Guys, it's small world.
Micheal here, who is the bearded candle maker,
actually saw our last series from Ireland
and follows us on Facebook.
Small world.. Very small world.
Thank you, man.
My girlfriend is going to love these candles.
Just a bit of back round on the history
of street art here in Belfast.
As we talked about in an earlier episode,
from the '60s onwards, all of Northern Ireland
was divided by the global conflict between
Protestants and Catholics, known as
The Troubles.
Here in the city, different ethnic neighborhoods
were literally divided by walls, and
it was there that the first murals appeared
about fifty years ago.
My name is Tim McCarthy.
I'm a street artist painting under
the name of Verz.
We have a reputation for
wall based art and murals,
but unfortunately for us,
it's been all the wrong kind.
And these murals have been very tribal
based on para military
images that are designed to intimidate.
That is their way of very visually
and very simply saying," You're not
welcome in this area."
What we've done as artists over the last
few years is play on this creation of murals
but try to create something slightly more positive.
So a lot of this stuff we do would be
environmental; there would be humor in it.
We're just trying to make very run down areas
look a lot more beautiful with our art.
Tour starts here at the Duke of York,
which is a legendary pub.
It apparently has a great whiskey selection.
But this is basically the courtyard right here.
We're going to be walking around the cathedral
quarter right now, and we'll show you
some of the best pieces from the walls,
along with a little bit of context.
Well guys, this piece of artwork
here is done by an artist called MTO
and it's called "Son of Protagoras"
In the subject's hands you have a
dove, which is the symbol of peace.
It's got two arrows through it.
On the fletchings of the arrow has the Catholic cross
and the other has the Protestant cross.
The idea being that they would have had peace here
in Northern Ireland if it had not been
for the religious divide.
We're walking past all these big, brick buildings,
which kind of speak of the city's past,
but apparently this is the LGBT quarter.
Apparently, not that long ago,
even ten years ago,
it wasn't very tolerant in that regard.
I think, from our guide's perspective,
a lot of things have changed.
I think it's part of the city's progress.
Just got to the Titanic Belfast,
voted this week as the number one
tourist experience in Europe.
Apparently, there's a ride in here.
So far this is pretty cool.
I have to say, that was one of the best
museum experiences I have ever had:
immersive, engaging, eye opening;
an in depth breakdown of the ship
and the tales of survivors.
It was intense. It was eye opening,
and I really enjoyed it.
The exhibition ended it with talking about
the future of Belfast...how this quarter,
the Titanic Quarter, is one of the largest urban
seafront regeneration projects in the world,
and right around the corner are the
Titanic Studios, which helped produce
Game of Thrones.
From what we've seen so far,
it seems that the city has gone through
numerous transformations: industrially,
culturally, politically, and is moving very far forward.
The future looks bright, There's a cocktail
in our future. Let's go.
My name is Steven Toman
head chef and owner of Ox Restaurant.
The Belfast food scene is amazing at the minute
It's very positive and super exciting.
All the young guys are coming back from traveling.
And we've got loads of ideas,
new products, new techniques.
Well our tagline is "seasonal
creativity" and our menus are
based on what's in season.
It's a blind tasting menu.
You don't know what you're getting
We were open two years when we got the star.
I mean, we're always working towards Michelin.
It's a standard that all chefs look up to,
and it's a dream to get it.
When we achieved it, it was just.......
a day we'll never forget.
What a lovely way to wrap up today.
Honestly. Beautiful meal,
great ambience, great wine pairing,
and just generally good vibes.
Alex and I have been lucky enough to eat
at a number of Michelin stared
restaurants in the last year.
This one was very distinct.
Very accessible price point:
fifty pounds for a five-course tasting menu.
And five courses, by the way, is the
perfect size for such a tasting menu.
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give it a thumbs-up,
share it with your friends, and subscribe
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In the meantime, stay curious, keep exploring,
and we'll see you guys on the road,
more specifically on the King's Road
because winter is coming.