Top chefs to cook up a treat at new city festival

Fifty of the world’s top chefs will congregate on Galway in October for a three-day festival showcasing the best of Irish produce, as well as featuring discussions and demonstrations on the theme of The Future of Food.

The man behind the Irish Food Symposium – Food on the Edge is self-taught chef, restaurateur, and general food encyclopaedia, Jp McMahon, one of Galway’s most innovative and best-known restaurant owners. Sometimes, as he admits, that can be for the wrong reasons, as happened last summer, following his expletive-driven reprimand to customers who failed to show up at his Aniar restaurant.

But despite the odd controversy, there’s absolutely no doubting Jp’s passion for food. He has been a key player in putting Galway on the food map nationally and internationally since he entered the restaurant scene in 2008 with his first venture, the Spanish tapas bar Cava, which was located on the City’s Dominick Street.

Jp and his wife Drigín now own the Michelin starred Aniar Restaurant and the gastro-pub Eat, as well as the tapas bar, now based on Middle Street and known as Cava Bodega.

It’s a lot to achieve, but there have been downs as well as ups, he says, and he is never happy standing still.

Hence this Symposium, which will see leading chefs explore the future of food in both a global and personal way. That will mean discussions on how we eat as individuals and families, what we throw away and how we can tackle food waste, says Jp.

There will also be talks and demonstrations to cater for Galway’s many fans of food in all its creative forms.

Creative is one word that describes Jp, who came to cheffing later in life, having first opted for an arts degree and masters in university.

But creative cooking has to be rooted in tradition, he says. And so, while he brings new techniques to bear, especially in Aniar where first Enda McEvoy and now Ultan Cook have headed up the kitchen, innovation is always done with respect for the past.

Since opening Cava in 2008, Jp has continued his own quest to learn more about food and cooking. It’s that hunger which drives him, he says.

It has taken him to places from Canada to South Carolina to Mexico, both as a Fáilte Ireland ambassador for Irish food and as part of a group of the international symposium of chefs, Cook it Raw.

He credits his involvement in Cook it Raw with helping to attract some of the world’s top chefs to Galway’s Symposium.

They include Albert Adria of Spain’s renowned elBulli, and Clare Smyth, chef/patron of the three star Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. There is Cornwall’s Nathan Outlaw, who has two Michelin stars, and Mexico’s most regarded chef, Enrique Olvera, while Singapore’s multi-award winning André Chiang will also join in.

René Redzepi of Copenhagen’s Noma can’t make this year’s event, but is pencilled in for 2016. However Mark Best of Sydney’s Marque restaurant contacted Jp with a view to coming, and has been added to the guest list.

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