Belfast restaurant Hadskis moving to Waterman House site
Hadskis restaurant is on the move with chef Niall McKenna relocating the popular venue to his Waterman House cookery school site on Belfast’s Hill Street.
The move from Commercial Court to a much bigger space will create a 50-seater venue rebranded as Waterman Restaurant.
What was the Hadskis site will now reopen as a walk-in business designed to appeal to the students and tourists.
The move to the Waterman House location is a signal of Niall’s intent to create a large hospitality hub in Belfast city centre.
The entrepreneur purchased the Grade B listed building at 5-23 Hill Street in 2018 as part an investment of more than £1 million to redevelop the former James Street South Cookery School.
Occupying the ground floor space of the old Bushmills bonded warehouse, the ground floor cookery school can accommodate groups of up to 18 with state-of-the art work stations and the latest kitchen equipment.
Niall said: “When I got the opportunity to take over the building almost four years ago, I wanted to create a unique hub of food, drink, hospitality with a creative buzz in one of Belfast’s best and liveliest locations and it’s all happening now.
“We want to help the city to get back to its best and we think that this will make a big difference. Waterman House is in a perfect location. In fact, this amazing building is my happy place and I hope it can become as happy a place for all of our guests and visitors too.”
Hadskis has been a popular haunt in Belfast since it first opened in 2014 and was listed in the Waitrose Good Food Guide just one year after opening.
Speaking to LCN last year, Niall McKenna said he had little faith in those in charge of Belfast city centre and that entrepreneurs like himself were helping to reinvent it on their own.
“There are three problems: a lack of office workers, hygiene and safety. Those are the things in the centre of Belfast that concern me and being realistic what is the plan for the centre of Belfast? What is the plan for spaces that are not being used?
“There is an opportunity now to develop Belfast and push on, to get more people living in the centre, get a better night-time economy and it’s just a matter getting the right support from the city council and Stormont to do it.
‘Take pride in out city’
“If they don’t all Belfast will be is outside spaces and box parks – people going in and just going for a quick buck.
“There are people like Willie Jack who are spending massive amounts of their own money on art installations, he’ll get no support for it whatsoever. We applied for grants which we didn’t get and it’s all about improving areas like the Cathedral Quarter and the Linen Quarter.
“My biggest gripe is bins being left out and kegs being left out. We need to make Belfast a clean city and at the minute it is a dirty city. It needs cleaned up, it needs rules. People within our industry are just leaving stuff outside their premises. In Westminster if you leave a bag outside and it hasn’t got a sticker on it at a set time you get fined.
“We have to take pride in our city. When tourists are coming here you want this place to be spotless, you don’t want people walking down Great Victoria Street and sticking to the ground. If they are going to put that stone down it needs cleaned.
“That’s where we need to get to so that that when tourists do come back they are going to look at this and say, ‘this is amazing, this is a great city’. As I say to everyone, our strength is our size. It’s small city and we need to be on top of it.”
