Friday’s Featured Food: Northern Irish Pastie Supper🟡🍟🥔in Bangor, Northern Ireland🟥🤚☘️

“Wee pastie supper please love” – Any given Northern Irishperson of a Friday night.

Today’s Friday’s Featured Food is a personal favourite of mine as it’s from my home country – the Northern Irish pastie supper. From my experience most travellers forget Northern Ireland exists, some even forget that it’s on the island of Ireland and most travellers head straight to Dublin when they book a flight to the island of Ireland. Wrong. You see, the best part of Ireland to see is definitely Northern Ireland, with Belfast being a key city, as the country’s capital and a city steeped deep in history and culture. History lesson over, now you tell me what on earth is a “pastie supper”!! And why it’s a Northern Irish phenomenon.

“Keep er lit you” – Northern Irishperson.

What the f*ck is a pastie supper?

By its very definition it’s obviously some sort of pastie to be consumed at supper time. That’s exactly it. Spot on, or “dead on” or “spotty dog” as the Northern Irish would say. Pastie Suppers are almost exclusively Northern Irish (though some variants undoubtedly appear in countries such as Scotland, Northern England, Cornwall and the Republic of Ireland). They are also for consumption mostly at supper time. It is not a normal breakfast or lunchtime item but here, see if you have a wee hangover, a pastie supper could work wonders so it could.. At dinner time or supper time pastie suppers are popular across Northern Ireland. Norn Iron. Stickin out.

“Bout ye mate” – Northern Irishperson.

I don’t visit my home country Northern Ireland often these days (I’ve been back twice in four years) but on my last visit I made sure to call into the local “chippy” for a pastie supper. Before you eat one, you want to ask: WHAT’S IN A NORTHERN IRISH PASTIE SUPPER?

What’s in a pastie supper?

Basically it’s minced pork, with potato, onion, herbs etc. all bundled together into an over-sized burger shape. This is then deep fried and served with chips. Salt and vinegar is a common extra. To top it all off this will come served wrapped in paper (on occasion old newspaper on the outer paper covers) and you will normally take it away.

Where I had my latest pastie supper, YEO!

I went to Wee Gee’s on the Gransha Road in the seaside city of Bangor, Northern Ireland for mine. That place never even existed when I left Northern Ireland in 2003. I was impressed to find that that good old Northern Irish pastie supper taste was still as good as ever. Yes, in Northern Ireland, we like to use the word that that that, twice or thrice, we even say…

“See that there?” – Northern Irishperson.

One of my favourite things about travel writing is actually telling other people about travel things they might not know about. This is a chance to do that – you may never have heard about a “pastie supper” until now so I highly recommend you visit Northern Ireland and I totally recommend you try a “pastie supper” (they’re hard to miss – almost every takeaway place in Northern Ireland will sell them, always cheap enough – a few pounds #quid will get you a decent one with chips – proper chips – and a drink). On a final note, this is not to be confused with a Cornish Pasty, a product of Cornwall which they are equally proud of. Sure Van Morrison even ATES them.

“Behind the stadium with you, my bronw eyed girl” – Van Morrison.

Footnote – Even Wikipedia have cottoned on to the fact that a pastie supper is almost exclusively Northern Irish! Now we are suckin’ diesel.

“Your ma” – Northern Irishperson.

Jonny Blair runs Don’t Stop Living and the Northern Irish pastie supper post is part of a regular series called Friday’s Featured Food. Jonny comes from Bangor in Northern Ireland but now lives a lifestyle of travel!

“And across the dark Atlantic, Belfast lies asleep” – Tim Wheeler.