Driving food to the edge

Lifestyle – Chef JP McMahon has been instrumental in putting Galway on the food map through his own restaurants, the Galway Food Festival and Food On The Edge. Ten years after opening his first premises, his passion is undimmed as Judy Murphy found out when she met him.

JP McMahon doesn’t have to think too hard about the high point of his 10-year career as a restaurateur in Galway City. “Winning the Michelin star for Aniar,” he says simply. Aniar, which opened in 2011, won the coveted award just 14 months later and the Dominick Street restaurant has retained it ever since. “Keeping that is probably the hardest thing we do every day,” he says. Another high point is the staff who have worked for them, many of whom are still in contact.

The low-point for the man who, with his wife Drigín Gaffey, owns two other restaurants in Galway is also an easy question to answer.

“Having to close Cava,” he says of the Spanish tapas bar Cava Bodega which was the couple’s first restaurant – it opened in 2008 on Dominick Street.

Cava closed in early 2013 because of what JP describes as “our equivalent to a bad mortgage”, namely upward-only lease. When the recession came, they were in trouble.  It was closed for a year but since its reincarnation in the city’s Middle Street, has gone on to new levels of success. However, at the time they closed, he didn’t know if it would ever re-emerge.

Aniar, meanwhile, attracts food-lovers from Ireland and abroad – mostly abroad, he says – many of whom visit Galway to dine there and in the city’s other Michelin-starred restaurant, Loam.

As well as running Aniar, Cava and Tartare Wine Bar, which collectively operate under the EAT banner, JP has also found time to become a mentor on the RTÉ series, Taste of Success, write a weekly food column for the Irish Times and launch a campaign to have food education included on the school curriculum. He’s also written a cookbook and regularly speaks at food conferences worldwide. In 2015, he broke new ground by launching Food On The Edge, an annual two-day symposium held in Galway every October, which has put Ireland on the international food map. It’s no mean feat for a man who turned 40 this year.

JP McMahon came to cheffing indirectly and without formal training but few people have had more influence on Galway’s or Ireland’s food scene than he’s had.

Dublin-born and raised in Kildare, he graduated in English and Art History from UCC, and during his holidays, worked in the Crawford Art Gallery Café when Isaac Allen of Ballymaloe was at the helm.  Before that, JP had worked in an Italian restaurant in Maynooth during his school holidays – his father taught physics in Maynooth University.

At different times too, he worked in the kitchen of Fat Freddie’s in Galway and was head chef there when he and Drigín got an opportunity to open their own restaurant. They opted for a Spanish theme with Cava Bodega. Later came Aniar, with its focus on West of Ireland ingredients and fine dining. That was followed by Eat at Massimo (now gone). Last year they opened a café and wine bar, Tartare on Dominick Street, across the road from Aniar, again focusing on locally-produced food and selling organic wine.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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