Bordering on brilliant, the Culloden Hotel, Co. Down.

Paolo Tullio's Review

While the economic upheaval continues and the sheer mass of information about it threatens to engulf us in a tsunami of print and TV overkill on the subject, each one of us has to form our own strategy for survival in 2009.

I'm trying to deal with the fact that there's always a lot of month left at the end of the money or, to put it another way, I need to reconcile my net income with my gross habits.

I've started by quadrupling the size of my vegetable plot, which seems to me to be not just a good idea, but somehow morally good, green and eco-friendly. It gets me back in contact with the land, with the perennial cycles of nature. I've become a peasant, like so many of my forebears. And, better still, I get access to wholesome, fresh garden produce.

That's one part of my survival strategy -- the other is simply to spend less, which is less work than gardening. No more extravagances is my new watch-word. The trouble, of course, is deciding exactly what is an extravagance. A useful definition is that an extravagance is anything at all that your wife can see no use for.

By that definition, eating out isn't an extravagance, so I'll be able to continue doing it.

You may have read about or seen TV footage of the cross-border shopping spree that took place in the run-up to Christmas. I learned from the BBC website that four out of 10 young Europeans were conceived on an Ikea bed, which goes some way to explain the northern exodus for shopping. But with a virtual parity now between the Euro and pound sterling, the cross-border shopper has even more reasons for doing so.

You run the risk of being accused of a lack of patriotism by shopping up North, but you will save a lot of money. True patriots will continue to spend in the south, happy in the knowledge that our government will use their tax share of that money to do really clever things. Or maybe not.

But with so many places in the six counties offering a pound for Euro exchange rate, the temptation to be less than patriotic is hard to resist. It all looks terribly cheap to people accustomed to the prices in the republic.

This week, I went north to stay at the Culloden Hotel, which is in Holywood, just outside Belfast. It was the palace of the bishops of Down and Connor and it's set in 12 acres of parkland overlooking Belfast Lough. It has the kind of chintzy Victorian interior that we expect from castles and palaces -- lots of dark wood, patterned carpets, mullioned windows, ornately elaborate ceilings and a kind of quiet reserve.

I'd arranged to have dinner in their restaurant, called The Mitre as an homage to its episcopal heritage, where I was joined by old friends from Belfast: Dee, Ally, Shirley, Len and Marian.

Before I'd left, I'd done a little research and found that The Mitre restaurant wasn't high on the gourmet lists, so I didn't have high expectations. I was expecting a competent meal in comfortable surroundings, but no more than that.

I looked down a fairly extensive menu listing some interesting dishes and at the end of it was the price -- £40. Effectively then, it was €40 for three courses in a five-star hotel. Even if the food turned out be unremarkable, the value for money element was already there.

The wine list is reasonably long, but it wasn't as interesting as the menu. There were decent wines listed, but whereas the menu price looked cheap in comparison to the south, the wine prices looked pretty similar. A premier cru Chablis at £50, a Mâcon-Lugny at £25, Sancerre for £32 -- all prices you find on a southern list. With a little encouragement from Dee, who is a committed oenophile, we chose two Burgundies from Faiveley, a Meursault at £60 and a Nuits St George at £58, both excellent wines.

We spread ourselves as much as possible around the menu. For starters, we had pigeon breast, smoked chicken, fingertail prawns and a special of lobster, followed by seabass, duck breast, rack of lamb and lobster again as a main course.

Before the meal began we were served amuse-bouches, including a memorable scallop topped off with caviar. When these little tasters are as well made as they are here, you know you're in the hands of a talented chef.

The meal went from strength to strength. All our starters were beautifully made and presented, as were the main courses. Throughout our dinner, the service was really excellent and attentive; the sommelier knew his job and the list very well. I thought that what we ate was in the upper ranks of fine dining and definitely one of the better meals I've had in a hotel, north or south.

Good desserts finished the meal before we adjourned to the lounge for coffees and teas. The wines had pushed the bill higher than I normally go to, at just over £380 -- or about €70 per person -- but if you were to content yourself with lesser wines than great Burgundies, you could dine in The Mitre and spend considerably less than you would in the south for a meal of similar quality.

The Mitre, The Culloden Hotel,

Holywood, Co Down.

Tel: (from the south) 048 9042 6777