Im all for the fine weather & the business it brings the excitement the craic for the guest & the production of management of people. We in our business are the willing we are the purveyor of food & drink & the creators of peoples experience. We are dedicated hard working and consistant to our trade. Our experience in hospitality will not be found on any certification from a college or school. We think on our feet we forward plan & are always fore-armed for any eventualities. We are given a blank canvas of the business and we create a new picture everyday. No day or night is the same no moment is the same nobody is the same. We are skilled to adapt and react and deliver. We are the Willing. We are Dedicated. We are a Unique highly skilled individuals. I pay my respects to All in Our industry who go to work do their job to the best of their ability To ensure Our guests enjoy the experience of Hospitality at the highest standards there are. #atyourservice 👤

How it looks to me that our food system changes.

Having been in this industry now for 26 years I have watched food go through 4 different changes in Ireland. Being in the scene as companies like pallas foods or la rousse were only being setup at the time I have had the pleasure of watching food on our island make several moves.

The first that I got to witness was the traditional stage as tourists flooded our green isle for things like Irish stew, bacon and cabbage and some of the best fish this world has to offer. The fish itself has taken a turn like no other. I remember as a child going with our father to the river to do a spot of fishing on a lazy Sunday morning. From the mouth of the river we could see the wild Salmon as they would make their climb up the river to the old nests where they would drop their eggs. Catching the salmon jumping up out of the water would have been a common thing as I grew up but now you could spend 3 days out by the river and never see a single one.

The next piece of growth in the Irish food scene. As owners started to come into plenty of money and the food scene took off into 2 areas. Gourmet and bulk. Bulk started taking place in towns with plenty of beds to fill. An example of that would be your Clifdens, Westport, Killarney etc. Where the bus tour companies moved in, serving anything but Irish food. They may have called it Irish stew but I’m about 98% sure that if your going to make Irish stew you could at least use Irish beef or lamb and well I reckon that 90% of all Irish stews at the time were made with beef which in my mind is the desecration of our culture by our own caused by figures on a screen. At the time of this taking place chef’s had no say, they were given figures and weren’t told do the best you can with that, they were told that’s what you have, this is what I want you to make now hop to it.

Our resilient chefs, this is where the fight back happens and food take a change for the right and the introduction of social media. Now I want you to sit back while you read the next part because some of you may think that’s a load of waffle but here we go. “The god complex” As we listen to idiots talk about figures, the truth comes out about food and what the people with the calculator have done. Devastating food, history, passion, belief and skill and then we the passionate have to listen to idiots with calculators talk about the shortage of chefs and wonder why. It’s actually pathetic to think that they will abuse a person to within an inch and then wonder why nobody wants to be a chef. DUE TO THE INCREASED VOLUMES OF SHIT THAT CHEFS HAVE TO PUT UP WITH, THE TABLE WILL TURN.

Where are we at now, well let’s talk about our own patch. 3 of the gangsters opened a restaurant with the food system in their minds. The best of Kerry on a plate I heard get passed around. Food is now changing and chefs are been proven that a god complex is fitting as for humans to survive we need to eat. The distance we are willing to go is fantastic. Allowing grown men to chop up your planet without a care in the world (No pun intended). In the mean time I watch our cluster, I’ll start with our Gangster Sid Sheehan who opened a school called nourish by nature, chef Noel create a gardening company to serve food that has grown with your plate in mind. Serving food that tastes the way it should. Marcus Eidner a mushroom foraging expert. Paul Cotter does his coastal and woodland foraging most days so as he may serve up the best he can find. The result is there is no calculator men here. Just people that are passionate about the next stage of the evolution of food.

The message I would like you to get is simple, protect your kids, raise your awareness and try not to give into the quick fix because the quick fix generally falls short of health and safety. Remember folks, man created the calculator, god created the planet….

So as a lot you of know I am back in college further progressing, learning new skills etc. It’s been a real juggle it you will between being a dad, student and a husband and then throw work in on top of that for fun. Some how I am getting threw it and passing my exams too so it ain’t too bad.

As I much as love learning in college, nearly every chef within TCG will vow for this, there’s a college way of doing things and proper way of doing things. Now I ain’t saying the college way is not right it’s just not practical in industry sometimes.

And even like that life ain’t practical sometimes, you move just to better your situation and you end up stuck again. Ie I moved to tralee originally to do game design.

I uprooted my whole family and then dropped out of the college. That there was a key point where my depression kicked in I felt I ruined my family’s future and there was no hope for me.

With the love and support of a great woman and wife I got through another course and graduated recently for the time in my life.

It a bit of a weird balance now if i being honest as much as being in a dark place helped me fight the light of the kitchen. I’m finding it hard on personal note being away from my kids so long

As much as I love the kitchen and the creative freedom my job let’s me have, I find myself longing for my days off sometimes; only to be in the kitchen with my daughter baking cookies or decorating cupcakes.

I came into the kitchen later in life (I’m nearly 30) but weirdly enough even though I grew up around it ( my dad is a master baker) I feel the kitchen somehow choose me. I didn’t choose it.

Looking back a year on since I started my first culinary course, that day there was 50 other courses on that page somehow I picked culinary arts, never in my wildest dreams had I thought to be a chef. Now my dream / goal is have my own restaurant. It might not happen but it’s fuel to a fire that’s recently been ignited and that’s what it is keeping me going.

FINDING MY TREASURE.

I remember when I was growing up I used to play treasure hunt with my brother Brian. We used to have so much fun planning on where we would hide the treasure and the delight I would feel inside when we found it. Today as a forty year old I again, found a beautiful treasure. This treasure can, should and is an inspiration to those that genuinely call themselves Irish.

I arrived at the shop at around 11 am all ready to do a bit of a T.C.G. video and on my way out I was planning it in my head. When I arrive and had only spoken a few words to Thomas and Eileen Ashe I realised I was underprepared and overwhelmed by passion, history and belief. Thomas Ashe is a hard working hell bent on doing the right thing by his people type person and you all know the other saying, behind every good man is an even better woman, Eileen Ashe is what we the people should call “it”.

Thomas brought me on a tour of the production area and the operation is spotless, you can see that the respect these people have for what they do is impressive, and we the people need to support a national 102 year old treasure.

Eileen brought me up to the shop, which used to be the old house where Thomas grew up. I got a fantastic run down of their lives and where they met and could see first hand the love and respect they have for each other and their local community. Eileen is so, so helpful, thoughtful and in her own community she has huge helpful impact, that makes the lives of others easier, this is what it means to be Irish. In their own shop in Anascaul they buy lots and lots of locally produced food from gifted artisan producers and they do this with a massive emphasis on support local.

Eileen and I spoke a little bit more on much heavier topics after that about the way the earth is and the rain forrest etc. and it was lovely to listen to someone so like minded and passionate for the need for change that it opened my mind again to hope and belief. To hear someone else so aware of the issues the planet faces was great. Leaves me feeling hopeful that something can happen with awareness. People can be informed as to what’s happening and the don’t have to be blinded by a perpetual smoke screen.

I know there’s been a bit of a ramble in everything that I’ve just said but I hope you find the message to be a clear one. This could be perceived as off topic but I can assure you the message is the same. I asked a really good friend of mine yesterday who is going through Ramadan at the moment can he explain to me what it actually is and what came after that I did not expect. He said “Ramadan is so that wealthy people can experience what it’s like to be poor, what it’s like to go without, what it is like to starve. I do believe the answer to the world’s problems are already here, we just need to pick quality over quantity and Ramadan could teach some of the wealthy people on this floating rock a lesson or 2. All in all the best way to describe the feeling I had leaving the Ashe’s company was that of hope, pride and belief. Feelings that you’d almost struggle to find in the busy day to day life we call today. Thanks for reading folks and for this one I’ll ask you to share, spread the treasure around and let’s get people talking and actioning the way things should be. Massive grá to Thomas and Eileen and thank you for inspiring me to write this piece.

Chef networking

As long as I’m in the kitchen there has always been a cameraderie between members of a crew then you get out to into the world and you bump into people as you do and strike up a conversation, with them and it enviably leads to food in my experience. Then you go to events and meet more like minded people and discover that there’s another way of doing something or an alternative use for something or a better use of something, both food and equipment. For instance a small tub becomes a speaker for music from your phone aswell as a handy protection from water or liquid that’s are usually around the kitchen that have a habit of spilling, tea/coffee or water being the most common. Communication through social media, looking for pointers, tips, tricks, recipes, ideas and concepts all from other chefs from around the world. From America to Australia from Shanghai to Tralee, chefs from all over the world look for ideas from other chefs on the other side of the planet. Through social media the far reaches of the world are on the other side of a keyboard or a phone or tablet just a click away. (I feel like a travel ad).
I find that the longer I’m in the industry the easier the network becomes, I’ve a spread throughout munster, from the places I’ve worked I love going back to these places and new places where former colleagues now work. The best example of this is a restaurant in Bandon where a former colleague and friend is now the proprietor, of a restaurant serving Irish and Syrian food. The last time i was in west Cork I had to stop by. . Yes this is a gangster blog and my name is not Vinnie. So you can’t say Vinnie sent you. Back to my point I stopped by because I spent a summer in a hot box of a kitchen with this guy who commanded respect and through thick and thin remained calm and I’m forever endeared to him for pushing me through some of the busiest services I’ve ever been a part of. Pushing each member of the crew to do better tighter plates, cleaner cuts, better portioning, better trimming and filleting boning etc. This is just one example, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a few of these type people. When someone is looking to move to another place your friends and colleagues will be the first to know, you could have recommendations from places but it’s a personal connection that will get you a job just as fast.
I worked with Johnny so and so in such and such a place. Often works or a phone call Pat will call into you on…

To me the chef network extends far beyond the kitchen to a life beyond the pass, when chefs leave the kitchen some yearn for the buzz but not the hours and pain it takes to get that buzz once every so often. I was once told you can leave the kitchen bit the kitchen will never leave you.

I suppose this may be true I’m not gonna find out anytime soon, I love what I do, I love where I do it, I look forward to a new shift no matter how tired I may be I still get to do what I do, and I love it

TO BOOK OR NOT THE BOOK, THAT IS THE QUESTION…..
So we opened Croí last year and we’ve been doing fairly well. We managed a building in Tralee that when you add Kevin, Noel and Paul has Croí. Heart, spirit, essence and much much more. We are so passionate about our industry that we are sick to the back teeth of others abusing it. The food system in the world is broken. We employ people from other countries to prepare our food and ignore the standard and quality we have at home. We have snobs in the country that think they are above everyone else but those are the biggest hypocrites of all. They squeeze every last drop out of service, demand service but still they believe everything is fine. All the smart people are too smart for their children’s own good. We eat mass produced mountains of garbage. I have heard of meetings taking place where the organisers of such event only care about greater yield at the expense of taste, quality and longevity. We at Croí want to break the trend. We want to support local so as that we can try to guarantee some sort of future for our kids. We want to get helped and help. We want our neighbouring restaurant to help us and in return we help them etc. etc. We guarantee we will work on sourcing “the best” our county can offer you, our people. We drive this restaurant to its limits to try to make ends meat in a society that taxes us to within a hairs breath of closure. What we ask for in return….

This is very simple, if we open and plan to stay we must make money to pay for aaaaaaalllll the taxes, wages, rates, bills, extras, even the paper the menu is printed on costs money and at the moment I have “hair-cut” written on the roster because there is so much to do it has to become part of a schedule. People come into Croí and book tables, some people walk in off the street hoping to eat and some people book tables and don’t turn up. I then have to wait 20 minutes and “i” have to ring you to see if your coming to sit at a table you booked. Knowing dam well that the 2 tables I have turned away would have enjoyed your table that is now free for the rest of the night because you couldn’t give a dam. People’s lives are at steak, weather you like the person or not is irrelevant because when you effect one of us you effect the team. You may even cost someone else their job, where does this dam get you because it could take them to the dole. One night at Christmas time, 28 people didn’t show, that’s your neighbour, your friend, your family member on the dole now. If a table goes from a 9 to 6, pick up the phone and ring, your taking up the table that I can use for the 2 to 4 people that are standing at the door of a restaurant that is trying it’s best to produce, support, employ and get through this life with as easy passage as possible by doing the right thing. If we decided to go the other way and told you we support local yet you see 1 truck pull up and deliver everything we serve then I think you would be saying to us eh, I’m not sure about that but we don’t we have several deliveries because we stand by our word. We are honest hard working people, why are you not? It takes less then a minute to do the right thing, I suggest you try it and you never know, we may hire a family member in the future…..

Year 2

I suppose it’s been a while so here goes another year, spring is off to a flying start with all the herbs and wild weeds coming thick and fast at this stage. I found the winter period tough on the foraging front as it became harder to locate usable sustainable quantities of different herbs both coastal and forestry, flowers, just gorse on tbe menu, ( them damn thorns), yet another joyous start in the tunnel rhubarb straight off the mark and strawberries in 2nd place along with last year’s chard gaining a new lease of life. The radish I dropped in and the beetroot also spouting nicely.

This year is an unknown entity due to restaurant coming on stronger than ever with the number of accolades growing steadily. The feeling of bittersweet joy and pride in my work, showing results is unusual I’m not used to being a successful in work, I’ve been by my own admission a failure in my own personal life, with comparisons to to others perceived situations. So overall balanced life even if it is a little sleepless at times. The foraging has taken itself to new heights and the wild garlic talk led me to have more confidence in my own abilities, with new ideas planning with every new day in the forestry or the shore.

I’m now getting spotted and stopped more often now and most commonly known as your one of them, the gangsters or the lads from Croi. I find it amusing as people don’t believe we actually do what we say we do.

Later this year my preservation will take a serious turn with the arrival of my wedding and the meriad of preserves I plan on making for it.

As always more action @chefpaulc on insta and twitter or a feed from the restaurant @croitralee on all social media platforms