TheTaste is proud to bring you exclusive interviews every month with Ireland’s food and drink industry giants. From award winning chefs to the best front of house personnel, top sommeliers and Ireland’s most successful restaurateurs, TheTaste is talking to all of them. Through our interviews we are examining the state of the food and drink industry in Ireland and abroad and finding out what drives our top industry players.
Hard graft amidst a decent working environment has benefits not only to the employee but to the employer. A case in point is the dual career path of Chefs Colin McKee and Chris McMenamin....
“If there is a day where I am not learning something I feel tetchy, like it is a wasted opportunity,” says Aisling Larkin, mindful eating coach and keynote speaker, well-being advocate, television chef/cook and founder of www.eatingmindfully.ie. Aisling...
For many, life is indeed a circle: you end up where you started. For Michelin-starred chef Danni Barry, it couldn’t be explained any easier. She grew up on a farm in Mayobridge, County Down,...
So much has changed in the past 20 months that for some, it’s difficult to keep up let alone engage with. Negatives can be found here and there and everywhere, but not for Ciarán...
Self-awareness is a great quality, and highly acclaimed executive pastry chef Paula Stakelum has it in abundance. It takes time, of course, to attain such a level – years, in fact, but once you...
“Ah, food,” says Crossy as if savouring the word, rolling it across a metaphorical tongue and using the nerve ends to experience every solitary tasting experience it can give. “If I could eat out...
To be able to work in a job that gives you the freedom to explore and share your creativity is, unquestionably, a win-win. Seriously, who wouldn’t want that? For Cal Byrne, that particular question...
We know that chefs get their gloves on, but we would never have thought they’d be getting their groove on, as well. Surprise, surprise, then, when it was revealed in the first quarter of...
Attention to detail, diligent, dedicated and above all self-possessed. All of these attributes and more can be combined to create something quite special, and if we know anything about the work of pastry chef...
“Topsy-turvey,” is how Chad Byrne describes the past 15 months. “I made the most of it and am thankful for what I have achieved during that time.” In fairness to the Executive Chef of Killarney-based...
There is little doubt about it – Michelle Lawlor has done it in the past, she is doing it in the present, and she will do it in the future. We are talking about...
“Pasta! I cook a lot of pasta mainly because I have a three-and-a-half-year-old who loves her pasta. My mum frowns about this and asks me why am I not making her rice. But she...
Holly Carpenter knows all about pressure. She was, after all, a 19-year-old when, as a design student in NCAD, she experienced a marked change in her life: she entered the Miss Ireland contest and...
Niall Sabongi sounds as if he’s out of breath. It is, he says with barely any prompting, “a bit hectic these days.” We hear you, Niall, we hear you. For the past few months,...
When Simon Delaney – busy actor and established presenter of the Virgin Media One morning show, Weekend AM – says that food is his favourite topic, he means it. This is no glib or...
Career life choices can be tricky things. Some people steer themselves far away from their family influences, while others are, you might say, born into what they eventually make a living from. Take Catherine...
It’s a truism as much as cliché to say that good things come to those who wait, but when it comes to Graham Herterich and his partner Daithi Kelleher, that their small-acorn-big-oak ideas of...
“A good place to start,” offers Ciara Kelly, “is to say that I love it.” As a broadcaster and newspaper columnist (and as if we could ever let her forget, a former GP), Ciara...
It is a rarity that as a child we know with absolute certainty what we want to be when we grow up, but Wade Murphy did. The chatty chef/proprietor of 1826 Adare says there...
It’s a long way from the Caribbean island of Margarita (which, let’s be honest, is as good a name for an island in the sun as you can get) to Ireland, but chef/television personality...