‘It was like an avalanche hit the place’... Chef JP McMahon on rise from Home Economcis classes in Kilcock to running Michel-Star restaurants

A MICHELIN STAR chef has told of how taking a home economics class in his secondary school in Kilcock inspired his passion for food.

Chef, restaurateur and author JP McMahon is the owner and culinary director of Michelin-starred Aniar Restaurant and award-winning Spanish restaurant Cava Bodega both based in Galway.

Given such success in what has been a prestigious career, it's hard to believe that it all had an unlikely beginning!

"It kind of started with home economics in school," said JP who is originally from Maynooth.

"I could only do woodwork or cooking and because I had asthma, I had to do home economics!" he added.

" I think I was one of three boys out of 30 students in the class in Scoil Dara."

"Back when I was growing up, everything was home made so there was always bread or scones in the oven so I suppose that had an impact too. "And when I was 15 I took a summer job in an Italian restaurant and I just got the bug.

"I tried to escape a few times. I went to college in Cork and did English and art and then I did a PHD in Drama and I just kept getting called back to the kitchen."

"Then in 2008, I got the opportunity to open a restaurant and the rest I suppose is history!"

Restaurants of all cuisines are popping up in towns and villages across the country, however, 16 years ago, people's perception of "small plates" as those in Cava Bodega took some getting used to as the talented chef explains!

"When we opened there was such a backlash against us, people were like what is all of this small food, we are not eating this!

"It literally took five years, you used to get men in looking for their steak! It was actually the women of Galway that saved us! They liked eating, talking, drinking, socialising and that was the whole point of the tapas. You sit down, you talk, you share food.

"It was up and down for a couple of years and then we got a review from Tom Doorley in the Irish Times in around 2010 and it said Cava was the best tapas restaurant in Ireland and things really changed from there."

JP achieved what every chef dreams of in 2012 when his restaurant, Aniar, was awarded a Michelin Star, something that was not foreseen as he explains:

"It was like an avalanche hitting the place," said JP.

"I opened it with my friend and the expectation was never to get that, we had a tiny budget of about €80,000 to fit out the whole place so we were very surprised and like the way we opened Cava we kind of had to go at it in reverse," he added.

"We had to learn to cope with having a Michelin Star as we hadn't set the restaurant up in that way. At the time we had no table clothes, we had no Sommelier, we didn't even have enough coat hangers! It was almost like a rags to riches story."

The quality of home grown ingredients means that the best of the best is available for an Irish chef according to the restauranteur who said:

"In the west I love seafood, oysters, mussels, clams, lobsters.

" I love cooking lamb. Anair's focus is very much on forraged ingredients like wild herbs, wild game, lots of different seaweeds that are on the west coast so we use them to give a sense of the flavours of the west of Ireland."

JP says that having a creative flair is often better than technical brilliance in the kitchen.

"I think passion and creativity makes a great chef, an almost like a child like interest in flavours and ingredients and really trying to probe into them as opposed to just replicating something that you see," said the high profile chef.

"There are lots of technically brilliant chefs all over the world but sometimes that little spark of finding something really special is sometimes lost if you are in that bubble of doing everything by the book."

Galway is an ever flowing resource for inspiration according to the Michelin Star chef who said:

"I have always loved the arts, there are so many festivals in Galway, it's very cosmopolitan. It has the university and loads of different events on and there are always people passing through. Sometimes it's hard to find a Galway person in Galway!"

JP McMahon will be taking part in Taste of Dublin Festival from June 13th - June 16th.