If you’re here from my ramblings about our adventure around the Ards Peninsula, this was probably the highlight of our day. If you haven’t seen that post you check out it out here.
One of my favourite restaurants was Katch 27 in Kircubbin which I had previously written about here, here and here before, but I couldn’t believe I hadn’t followed up.
Katch 27 closed in 2019 before Leigh and David opened in The New Quays at Portavogie in early 2020. David was the former Head Chef of The Quays so it’s lovely for him to have come full circle.
As I said on my other post about our day out, if you don’t know about this place, get to know.
As we were planning our trip, Laura asked if we would need to book and I (somewhat stupidly) replied that we wouldn’t need to for lunch. As we pulled into the car park, I realised that I was wrong.
As we walked in the door, the first thing I saw was Leigh welcoming us before the waitress asked if we had a booking. Clearly we didn’t and I think we got the last free table for lunch.
Seafood features heavily on the menu, as you’d expect being a few hundred meters from the harbour in Portavogie, but the whole of the menu sounded lovely. One of my (probably strange) pet hates is when a restaurant doesn’t tell you what the soup of the day is, so it was a welcome change when we were told that as soon as we sat down.
We opted for the sharing breads to start and I went for the honey chilli chicken and Laura picked the shredded chicken for main.
The breads were so fresh and included a brioche roll, ciabatta, a crusty roll and some wheaten. They were served with butter, a really lovely tapenade, pesto and a beautiful mango and sweet chilli sauce. Everything was really tasty and was very nicely presented in a wooden crate.
The first thing that stuck us both when the mains arrived was the size of the portions!
My honey chilli chicken was amazing and came with a very tasty garlic naan and home cooked chips.
Laura’s shredded chicken was served with some of the really nice chilli sauce from the breads and she had opted for garlic chips. There was so much shredded chicken that we were offered a box to take the leftovers home, and they did us both for lunch on Sunday.
I noticed before we had ordered that the table behind us has ordered pavlova for dessert and I was thinking of that for afters, but after my starter and main I genuinely couldn’t have eaten anything else.
We’ve heard a lot over recent months about the proposed increase to business rates, which would have resulted in The New Quays shelling out (excuse the fish pun) an eye-watering £53,000 per year.
While this proposed rate increase has been delayed, their bill this year will still be over £30k. This is on top of higher electric, fuel and waste costs, increased costs from suppliers, a rise in wages and National Insurance contributions, bank and card charges, insurances and everything else they need to operate.
Eating out can be expensive, depending on where you go, but supporting local business is so important.
We will definitely be back to The New Quays, but we’ll be sure to book a table first!
Practical details
The New Quays
81 New Harbour Road
Portavogie
BT22 1EB
Tel: 028 4277 2225
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/thenewquaysportavogie
Opening Hours:
Thursday & Friday – 10am-8pm
Saturday – 12pm-8:30pm
Sunday – 12pm-7:30pm
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