forke-magazine PAGE 11
John Ferris speaks to Danny Miller about memories
of growing up in North Belfast and his latest
venture, taking on a pub in Hillsborough...
G
etting Danny Miller to stand still
long enough for an interview is
as easy as impressing Michel
Roux Jnr with a shit sandwich.
It's understandable that Miller,who has
graced our screens for the past few years on
the Great British Menu, is hard to pin down
� running Balloo House, with it's fine dining
restaurant and its down to earth bistro, is a
job in itself. But when I finally pinned him
down for an interview,he was also just a
few weeks away from opening a new ven-
ture in County Down.
The pub, which previously traded as the
Marquis of Downshire in Hillsborough is a
venture that's been an on-off affair for a few
months.
In July when I last met Dannyat Balloo
House, the idea of a second place was off the
menu. Two months later and the Marquis
has got new owners and more importantly,
a new name.
"Atthe minute I'm 99 per cent sure that
we'll be calling it Parson's Nose, the name is
a bit of a take on the chicken," said Danny
with a cheeky laugh.
Unlike upstairs in Balloo House, the new
venture won't involvefine dining, concen-
trating instead on good, honest food at a
reasonable price.
"The new place will be good Irish pub
food, there'll be no fine dining. We always
wanted another pub because if you go out in
Belfast there are some great places to eat
but if you go outside the city it's difficult to
find a good place.
"It's just going to be good local produce,
which works really well as long as you get
the right people around you.
"We'll be opening in about two weeks and
our head chef here Grainne, who's a Westie
herself, will be taking on this place [Balloo
House] and I'm taking one of my senior men
from here for Hillsborough."
It's a long way from his first foray into the
world of food when aged nine he joined an
afternoon cooking class at Edmund Rice pri-
mary, a school he affectionately remembers
his father carrying him down to from their
home.
"Westarted to do a Wednesday afternoon
course, where you could do Irish and other
things but I chose cookery."
His family,he says, thought he'd "gone to
the dark side" by joining up to a cooking
course. Back then, cooking wasn't seen as a
line of work for men, but the young Danny
said it wasn't food that first attracted him to
the class.
"I'll always remember it, there was Miss
Walls who took it and she was hot, very hot.
So I wasn't originally going for the food. But
we started making short bread and German
biscuits and stuff like that and I remember
everyone saying when I got home how
lovely it all was. It was great, especially
since there weren't a lot of luxuries about
back then."
Miller was born in Fortwilliam Parade in
1972 but the family had to movefor the first
time some four years later when loyalist
paramilitaries threatened to burn the family
out of the mixed area.
Relocated to the top of the New Lodge,
beside Lynch's bar, the family were moved
on again by the Housing Executive to 91
Antrim Road, just two doors from Gerry Fitt
who was at that point the leader of the
SDLP.
His first job was at the Felon's on the New
Lodge Road, where his father occasionally
did the door after being made redundant
from the Michelin plant in Mallusk.
"My first catering job, if you could >>

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