The Ho-Ho Is No More-More
The rumours are true then. The Ho-Ho is gone. Flattened in the name of modernising the Dublin Road.
Back when I were a lad, me and the girlfriend lived in India Street off Botanic Avenue. We had our pick of dodgy chippies to eat out of, but the Ho-Ho was one of our favourites. In those days, it had those cheap Van Gogh prints that were all the rage (about a fiver each in Au Naturale on Rosemary Street) and crappy white plastic garden furniture for the sit-in crowd to eat at.
We were students at the time and we’d actually head down to the Ho-Ho once in a while with a couple of rounds of buttered bread, order up a curry split and have a curry fried rice sandwich.
Now, Paul Rankin may claim that he invented the Curry Fried Rice Sandwich, but the honour is actually shared between me and the Ho-Ho. Their thick, pasty curry sauce mixed with fried rice was crying out to be smeared between two slices of Mother’s Pride. Yes. I was that man.
Anyway, I’m galled that they knocked the place down. Fair enough, it’s been a few years since I visited (I heard it had gone downhill!), but it’s almost as much of a blow as discovering they demolished Livingstone(d) Hall up at Queen’s Elms in 2001. Took me weeks to get over that….
On that note, anybody got any stories of their old University stomping grounds? Better still, anybody else live up in Livingstone Hall around 1995-96?
Update: Jett Loe’s original pictures of the Ho-Ho before it was knocked down.
Sorry Mr L, but the Ho-Ho was surplus to requirements with the sublime gourmet cuisine of the emerald just 2 doors down!
Damn! I was wondering what was in that building that was knocked down.
Special Snacks RIP.
I’m tellin’ ya, the Special Snacks from the Emerald are just as good (I was always convinced that they were not only run by the same people, but that there was some corridor out the back / underground linking the two kitchens)
Besides, didn’t the Ho Ho have a sign up saying they were moving to Botanic Ave or Shaftsbury Square or something?
It’s a no-contest Mr Levee. Mr.Paul Rankin may have mastered the gastronomic delicacies associated with gourmet dishes fit for a monarch. However your claim to fame with the, yet unnamed dish, “The thick pasty curry sauce mixed with fried rice which cried out to be smeared between two slices of Mother’s Pride” may be one Mr Rankin will be let you have on your own. Pass the salt.
Parnell, they’re rather clumsily named Curry Fried Rice Sandwiches.
Beano: I’ll have to check out Botanic Avenue and see for myself…
Was this not also the site of Crymble’s Guitar Shop and headquarters of the Orange Order. Sadly, the many members of the orange order did not trade their fife and drums in for decent Les Paul Gibson guitars from the shop, which would have improved “orange fest” no end…
(Rankin’s coffee shops are becoming as soul destoyingly inescapable as Starbucks… walk the extra few feet for Maggie May’s or Bookfinders )
I don’t remember a guitar shop being there, not in my time in Belfast. I thought it was the UUP headquarters a few years ago, but Orange Order fits too…
Has anyone ever tried doing a rock version of the Sash, as a matter of interest?
“walk the extra few feet for Maggie May’s”
Nooooo- Maggie May’s is on my black list. The customer service in there is second to all. I’ve started doing restaurant reviews on El Blogador- get the real picture there
Re. Paul Rankin- his places are crap. Plus they’re a rip-off for what you get.
I sat beside him on the plane before- he turned his nose up at the plance food. Methinks he was just jealous
There is a certain charm to the old fashioned disdain that the staff in Maggie May’s hold the general population - not a place to be in a rush…
This is much better than the false politeness and quick service of all the other chain-store “have a nice day” coffee shops
I haven’t been to Maggie May’s in a long long time. I used to live behind it on Cromwell Road in 1997 and it was suffering from a rodent problem. The last time we went in, there were three flies swimming in the milk jug….
We didn’t stop long enough to order…
Mr Levee,
I spent two years in Livingstone Hall back in ‘79/80 and have
fond student memories. I know it is now demolished but would have loved a phoyt of it. I was on the 10th floor - and really enjoyed it!
What a small world! I was on the floor below that in 1995.
Man, I miss that place, the parties, the girls! Was it mixed accommodation when you stayed there?
No - all males. The girls were in Alanbrooke and Sinton!
I had such a great time there and would have loved to have
had a photo to remember it. I took my son to show him where his Dad had stayed for a few years when a student and shocked to discover it was rubble. Aall my yesterdays!!!
What a shame! Funny, I did exactly the same thing - took the kids down to see the old digs and they’d been levelled. Talk about trauma!
I wish I’d had a photo too. Thought about taking one of the remaining blocks, but it’s not the same thing, is it?
I have often wondered if Queen’s do not have a photographic record of the old Halls of Residence - as I would love to have a memory of
my time as a student grant!
Take off the rose tinted glasses boys. It may have been great craic in the halls, but don’t you remember the incredibly uncomfortable beds, and the cleaners that barged into your room when you were fast asleep, half naked and hung over!
Mrs Levee,
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be! Funnily enough, I do
remember my cleaner. Sadly she died of cancer but she probably took pity on young ist year students like me who were away from home for the first time.
You pampered people in Halls! Luxury
You should have had my baptism of fire,
There were 150 of living in t’shoe box in t’middle of t’road…
Well not quite but it was a room in a dump in the Holy Land
It was even more of a dump when I moved in. It cost £15 per month
David
we were at Queens at the same time!
Aileen,
I used to DREAM of living t’box!!!
LUXURY!!!
Before she was Mrs Levee, she used to get very embarrassed when the cleaners stumbled into the room at whatever time in the morning. If we’d been attending our lectures she wouldn’t have been discovered!
Aileen - Not surprised that the Holylands houses were awful even back then. I did a bit of property letting some years ago as a student and we had bottom-quality shitholes in all those streets.
I remember on one occassion having to evict someone who was in one of my classes from digs in Cromwell Road. I had a heart of stone!
In fact Mr Levee and I first met in a dump on Cromwell road, so I have some affection for the place. Water running down the inside of the walls and bedrooms collapsing into kitchens (that really happened!) still make me feel warm and fuzzy inside!
As I recall, Mr Levee was quite active around Livingstone Hall, fixing stereos and what not.
What a man of the people.
Yes, I was quite the handyman in those days - always willing to ‘lend’ a ‘hand’. Come to think of it, weren’t you known as Randyman in your ‘hood?
We’re not that dissimilar, you and I…..ha ha ha ha ha…