Maggie Mays Belfast – A Hungover Student’s Dream Café

  Myself, Louise and Anna had just arrived in Belfast and the first place to check out on our list was Maggie Mays which is located right beside Queens University. There was a queue out the door and it being Pancake Tuesday, the girls were gearing up for some serious pancake action. That was until we saw a delivery man coming in with a big plastic bag filled with pre-made pancakes, so that kind of changed their minds.

It's a tiny little spot, filled with many a hungover college student and the majority of the customers looked a little bit worse for wear from the night before. We were absolutely famished, so the girls ordered an Ulster Fry each, and I asked for the bacon and cheese baked potato. Our waitress didn't really understand the meaning of gluten, when I double checked if there was any flour added to the dish, and that was a bit disconcerting. While we were waiting, plate upon plate of chips came out for other customers in the restaurant, and our eyes lit up, regretting not having ordered them as they looked insanely good.

When our meals arrived we were a bit overwhelmed by the amount of food in front of us. The two Ulster Frys came first and were huge and had four types of carbs - bread, pancake, potato bread and hash brown. Not a lot of effort had gone into the presentation, with a square side to the fried egg which looked a bit weird. My baked potato came about fifteen minutes after the guys' meals, and once again, the portion was ginormous. It seemed a whole pack of cheddar cheese had been melted over the potato, which was quite tough and felt like it may have been reheated. The strangest thing about the baked potato was definitely the sides that accompanied it - even more cheese, as well as pineapple, sweetcorn, cucumber, tomato, lettuce and coleslaw. I almost felt like I should have been given two slices of bread instead of a potato so that I could make a sandwich out of all the components on the plate.

We figured this was very much a place to come when you were deathly hungover, and in dire need of deep fried goodness on a plate, but not necessarily a place to pop into for lunch of a Tuesday. Because we'd heard so much about the Maggie Mays milkshakes, we ordered a Malteasers milkshake to go - but we could have chosen from about 50 different options. It came covered in cream, chocolate sauce and marshmallows and was obviously delish. Between the three of us we couldn't finish it, but we were glad we'd checked out the one thing everyone had recommended. I feel like if we were to return to Maggie Mays, we'd hit it up after a night on the sauce, order a plateful of their delicious looking chips and sit there for 3 hours gossiping about the events of the night before. However is it a slick place for a classy brunch or lunch? Not so much.

During our wanderings around Befast, we asked the locals where to get the best burger in Belfast, and Maggie Mays name cropped up a few times. Take a look....