A Belfast restaurant got caught up in an online spat with a famous food critic earlier this week after poking fun at him and his negative review on their Facebook page.

Made in Belfast received a scathing review from Jay Rayner, a food critic who writes for The Guardian and also appears on the UK version of MasterChef.

 

Jay Rayner (far right) wasn't very pleasant about Made in Belfast.

The company decided to make a joke out of it by mocking up a picture of Mr Rayner as a leprechaun and quoting this line from his article: “It uses the word ‘Irish’ 16 times. The beef is Irish. The chicken is Irish. So are the mushrooms, the butter, the goat’s cheese, the bacon, the beetroot… You get the point.”

According to the Belfast Telegraph they then wrote underneath: “Sure where else would you rather be on St Paddy’s Day?” It was only a matter of time before it went viral.

It was also only a matter of time before Mr Rayner requested that the post be removed and tweeted out his full review to his 70,000 plus followers.

The owner of the restaurant Emma Bricknell told the Telegraph: “We put it up and literally within seconds it was being commented on… It was just meant to be a tongue-in-cheek thing.”

 

This was the second post the restaurant put up.

She added that there were no hard feelings between Mr Rayner and the restaurant which removed the Facebook post and followed it up with another thanking him for his opinion and saying that they were taking what he had said onboard.

The food critic responded: “Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment, but there are ways to do these things. Still, done. Have a great St Patrick’s Day.”