Home cooking with a difference puts restaurant on culinary map

Date Published: 31-Jan-2013

Amaya Fernandez has always had a profound relationship with food. The owner of Lunares, the colourful Spanish restaurant and tapas bar which adds an uncharacteristic splash of colour to Woodquay, first fell in love with food through her father Julio in their home in Madrid.

“We are three girls and three boys and three of them are chefs. That passion comes from my father Julio. My mother is a brilliant cook but my father was the one who had a real passion for it. He died when I was 12.”

Amaya goes on to recall how she, in fact, was bulimic as a young girl. She would eat just sweets, cakes and chocolates and then throw up.

“It was an automatic reflex to vomit. I suppose my brain did it. I wasn’t really fat but some kids made fun of me. After two years I grew up.”

I point out that the illness may have been a reaction to the shock of losing her father, a seminal event in her life.

Her mother, a nurse, was left to raise the family after the death of her 40-year-old husband. The prison warden was tragically knocked down with a friend while changing the wheel of a car.

For two years she slept with her mother who tried to soothe her nightmares. Food no longer held the same enjoyment for the teenager.

“My mother made me eat lentils and livers, all this stuff with iron. In my house if didn’t finish you weren’t allowed to leave the table. All my teenage years I was at the table on my own looking and moving food all over the plate.”

She also turned off school. She left at 16. One year later she got pregnant with her son, Alvaro.

Living at home, she made ends meet by entertaining children as a clown at parties and schools through her own theatre company.

By the time her son was nine she wanted to escape the big city of Madrid.

Without a word of English, she took a flight to Edinburgh in August 2002 but found the cold unbearable. Having heard only good things about Galway from a friend living here, she promptly took a flight to Belfast. It was 1am by the time she arrived following a 12-hour delay and she planned to bed down on the floor for the night.

“My first impression was amazing. This couple who had got married in Spain that summer spent one hour trying to find a place to stay for me and my son. I didn’t want to spend a penny because my budget was very tight.

“Eventually I agreed to stay in the hotel at the airport and they helped me check in and gave £30 to my son to pay his half of the room. I thought where am I? There are angels. I come from Madrid where everyone is running, nobody is helping anyone. It’s always been the same. All the people I meet are always trying to help, they have this love, this good heart. This is why I stay in Galway.”

The first job she got was in a cafe in Woodquay run by Basque people.

“I worked as a waitress and had no English. When a customer asked me for something I brought everything,” she smiled.

She was always pushing her son to work hard at school and decided to go back herself.

She did a foundation course in the GMIT (Galway Mayo Institute of Technology) where she learned basic maths and English. She went on to do a course in professional cookery and later a degree in culinary arts.

She proudly exclaims that she won best student award in her first course and graduate with a distinction in the latter.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.