Bethel’s Kitchen,
11C Church Street,
Dromore,
Co Down,
BT25 1AA
instagram.com/bethelskitchen
Willetta Gabriel saw a problem and decided to solve it. It was a pickle problem, specifically the fact that the pickled cucumbers available here were nothing like those she knew and loved in her native Michigan, where she moved from two decades ago.
So, after research, time, effort, trial, error and a bit more time, she managed to make them just the way she liked them. Then friends told her how good they were and encouraged her sell them. So Bethel’s Kitchen was born and the pickled cucumbers were soon joined by pickled garlic, as well as pecan pies and bagels.
While selling from her home and finding a few local stockists was a good start, things took off when she found premises down an entry off Church Street in Dromore. That’s where you’ll find those pickles, pies and bagels now, as well as hefty hoagie sandwiches, coffee and a few tables and chairs to host a serious lunch by anybody’s standards.
After such a lunch, chatting while more bagels were packed up to head up the road with, I tell her I had read an article in which she explained she started making her own pickles because most of the ones you get here are rubbish.
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She’s quick to correct me, with a laugh.
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“I didn’t say they were rubbish – I said they were different. Just not to my taste.”
She’s far too nice to say it so I will. For the most part, they’re rubbish. Vague texture that tastes of nothing but tooth-achingly sweet vinegar.
These, on the other hand, are glorious. First of all, they taste like cucumbers. The pickling process has enhanced the veg instead of overwhelming it. The garlic and dill-infused vinegar is balanced on a pinhead. There’s a crunch and snap about the spears that makes them a prime candidate to be scoffed in one sitting, with what’s left in the jar sunk as a chaser. Which probably wouldn’t be the best idea. But not definitely.
You can buy jars of the pickles. Sorry, you should buy jars of the pickles. As well as cucumbers there are slivers of red onion and also fat cloves of garlic, the main event this time rather than a flavour boost, bobbing around in pungent but sparklingly fresh-tasting liquor.
But Bethel’s Kitchen is not just a pickle stand. It’s a micro-bakery, specialising in bagels, which have clearly had as much time, thought and effort put into them by Willetta and her team as the pickles have.
A bagel isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you’re considering the last word in decadence but the ‘Canadian’ here is so luxurious the perfectly soft, oozing egg I had added to the bacon and cream cheese feels like a step too far. Almost.
There’s a snowdrift of cheese, spilling out of the bagel, it’s richness punctuated by the deep umber stiff lengths of salty bacon that are, just like the pickles and the bagels, so distinctly American.
And then there’s the French toast bagel that’s trying to contain it all. Glazed with egg and cinnamon and shimmering with maple syrup, the whole lot is breakfast and lunch and dessert and everything else.
Throw the cascading egg yolk into the mix and you’re dealing with a total mess of a thing. A total triumph too.
A cold turkey club is a simple classic in which the quality of the ingredients – you’re not finding deli sliced turkey like this many places this side of the Atlantic – and the perfect execution of the bagel, this one a salt and pepper number, are unimpeachable.
A huge Italian hoagie, another beautifully baked whopper of a roll, layered with ham and couple of varieties of salami, provolone cheese, and some lovely veggie bits and pieces, gets a kick of red wine vinegar to bring it alive and keep you going for a couple of meals if you’re feeling restrained, or share if you’re feeling generous.
Unfortunately they don’t have any classic pecan pies.
“We’ve only got chocolate bourbon ones.”
Oh, no. What a disaster.
The pastry crumbles and the sticky filling crunches then melts. They’re worth the visit alone, and an unlikely treat to emerge from a pickle problem, a pickle problem anyone who gets the chance to sample Bethel’s Kitchen should be grateful for.
The bill
- Canadian bagel with egg £10
- Turkey club bagel £9
- Italian hoagie £12
- Chocolate bourbon pecan pie x2 £10
- Ice caramel coffee £4
- Americano £3
