MEN AT WORKFor Ross Lewis, educating his three young daughters about food is the greatest gift he can give them, he tells MARIE-CLAIRE DIGBYahead of the Taste of Dublin festival next week.
ROSS LEWIS COULD never just pop into his local farmers’ market, pick up a few vegetables and be gone again in minutes. Walking around the Sunday market at the People’s Park in Dún Laoghaire with him and his young family is like trailing after royalty. They make a striking picture, the chef and co-proprietor of Michelin-starred restaurant Chapter One, and his three blond daughters, Molly (eight), Éabha (six) and Sheana (two).
They’re well known, and obviously well liked by many of the market vendors, and Lewis can’t go more than a few steps without bumping into someone who wants to talk to him: stallholders, friends, neighbours and customers of the restaurant.
The Sunday morning shop is a ritual for the family, and it’s clearly a highlight of Lewis’s busy week, which includes long hours at the restaurant. “I remember going to the market with my dad and talking to the people who produce the food, and tasting the cheeses and selecting the veg. I’m not a lawyer, I can’t advise them on the legalities of life. I’m a chef, so this is a thing I can give them.”
As the girls pick through big fat fingers of white asparagus, looking for “the nice thick ones with pink tops”, it’s clear that these mini gourmands know what they’re at. “I don’t like forcing things on children, or people, but if you make it interesting . . . Like when we go to the market, I’ll say ‘these are broad beans’ and get down with them and I’ll say ‘look, these are good when you open them; this one is good and this one isn’t.’ I know what I’m looking for and I try to teach them that. It’s just a simple thing, but it makes it interesting for them.”
As anyone who has ever entrusted the weekly shop to someone who doesn’t recognise good produce from bad, and who has been presented with bundles of yellowing broccoli, soft tomatoes and wilting lettuce will attest, giving kids this empowering knowledge makes a lot of sense, and will make a difference to their lives.
Passing on a love of food and an appreciation of where it comes from is central to Lewis’s philosophy. “What I love about the market is that I can interact with the artisans; if everyone was as passionate about what they do in life as these guys, it would be great. Of course we shop in supermarkets, but I also believe that if you only ever eat food off supermarket shelves then maybe the diet becomes bland and undiverse. And you don’t get the emotional exchange in a supermarket that you get at a market.”
The sun is shining, for once, and the market is thronged with shoppers. As Lewis asks after an artisan cheesemaker who has been taken ill, Denis Healy, of organic fruit and vegetable fame, tells me that the chef brought a lamb dinner in to him when he was in St James’s Hospital last year. It was a gesture he won’t forget.
Stopping at the Sheridan’s cheese counter, Lewis introduces himself: “I owe you money from last week, do you remember?” before asking for some Irish cheddar and some mature Gruyère – “the girls love it”. Pat Smith, wine merchant and Rhône specialist, comes over for a chat, and Lewis says: “I’ve got my cheese, and my wine man is here now. I couldn’t be happier.”
Meanwhile Molly, Éabha and Sheana are making short work of slivers of cheese, and giant green olives from the Real Olive Company, washed down with Llewellyn’s apple juice. There doesn’t seem to be anything they won’t eat. “We’ve tried to expose them to the kind of food we eat and like,” Lewis says. But it’s not all celery and carrot sticks – there are chocolate crêpes to look forward to when the shopping has been done. “In general, my philosophy is that it is my duty to temper the palates of my children. If there’s a gift I can give them, it’s the gift of the palate, because I think it’s something that stays with you all your life.
“A lot of industrialised food is based on sugar, salt, and fats, and I think if children’s palates are ruined in the first 10 or 12 years, you’ll never bring them back – they’ll always want that high-hit flavour of crisps . . . Pringles . . . nuggets. The food industry has really singled out children and they know that if children become reliant on getting that hit when they are young, they’ll want it all their lives. I like to give them natural foods, and then it’s a bit like religion – you can only guide them, and hopefully guide them in the right direction.”
So, did Lewis, who grew up in Cork and studied dairy science at UCC before becoming a chef, grow up with “the gift of the palate”? “My parents came from agricultural backgrounds, and my mother is a very strong cook, but based around simple farmhouse dishes. She would have influenced me, and the food that we had would have been solid and very good.”
Denis Healy’s organic fruit and veg is next on Lewis’s shopping list, and on the way he stops to pick up four trays of free-range eggs, destined to be poached in red wine and served as part of a dish on Chapter One’s lunch menu. “Freshness is all,” he says. “Commercial eggs could be 10 or 15 days old.” These eggs, he knows, couldn’t be fresher, having come straight from Liz Keegan’s hens on her farm in Enniskerry.
Armed with big bags of produce, we head back to the Lewis family home in Monkstown, where Ross’s wife, Jessica, who works in the office at Chapter One as well as running the home, welcomes us with fresh coffee, and the girls run out to play in the beautifully kept garden.
Éabha’s birthday cards are on show, and there’s lots of chat about her birthday party. How do they manage to stick to their healthy eating policy at times like those? “Look, I’m not a zealot. Kids go to parties, they get crisps and all that kind of thing, but we try then not to provide it in the home, although they get it on special occasions. But it’s not like they go to the cupboards and open it and take out crisps – that’s not done,” Lewis says. “We try not to give them the bad stuff. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We never gave them soft drinks. I don’t drink them, my wife doesn’t drink them. That’s not to say you can’t drink them now and again. But we don’t have them in the house, and when they get them now they say ‘I don’t like that’. That’s not to say that they won’t start.”
At home, the three girls are involved in everything that goes on in the kitchen, which is clearly the heart of this home. “We have a lot of people here, not every Sunday, but once a month at least we have a gang of people around and I’ll cook. The girls love that. They love people coming in,” Lewis says. So do they get to help out? “Absolutely, that is the deal. They’re mad for it, they call it ‘chef to chef’ – ‘Daddy, I’m a chef and you’re a chef, so it’s chef to chef’.”
The family enjoy going out to eat, too. “We go out if not once a week certainly once a fortnight to local restaurants. We’re in at six and out at eight. We go to various restaurants, from Ragazzi in Dalkey to Oliveto in Dún Laoghaire. It’s good for to have the formal dining experience, just in terms of behaviour – how to behave in restaurants. It’s part of the growing-up process. Of course, I wasn’t taken to a restaurant until I was 15, but life has moved on.”
The girls also get to eat in their father’s restaurant. “They come in for pre-theatre once a month and they really enjoy the experience. We’ve now got a chef’s table in the kitchen, and I look forward to having them in. They can eat at that and I can join them.”
He may enjoy sharing his starry domain with his daughters, but would Lewis encourage them to make a career in the business? “You never see second-generation restaurateurs. I think you have to have a grá and a passion for it, and if I saw that in my children I would help them and encourage them. I know about the restaurant industry that if you don’t love it you’ll end up hating it with a passion. As a career it has been very good to me, but at the same time it’s a tough career – it’s stressful, with long hours, and it’s repetitive. Stress is the major thing. I love it, but you need to be someone who loves a constant changing backdrop; you need to be somebody who likes change. My father is the opposite of me – he was the managing director of a pharmaceutical company that employed 700 people – but he wouldn’t do what I do for one day.”
Ross Lewis will be in action in the Drumms Chefs’ Demo Theatre at Taste of Dublin next Saturday evening. You can sample dishes from Chapter One restaurant each day at the festival, which runs from Thursday to Sunday. See www.tastefestivals.ie
THAI PRAWN BROTH. . . stuffed loin of rabbit . . . mussels Provençal . . . the children of chefs seem to eat very well, even the very young ones. Gaby Cribbin, six-year-old daughter of Bang Café head chef Lorcan Cribbin, eats out in restaurants regularly, and has already had the Michelin-star experience. "It was Lorraine, my wife's birthday, and we were going out to Chapter One, and she asked if she could come. She was very well behaved. She had a Thai broth with prawns and ate away and loved it," Cribbin says, remembering as only a chef would exactly what was ordered and eaten.
And the rabbit? "My parents were up for their anniversary dinner, and Gaby had stuffed loin of rabbit with carrot and cumin puree and shaved raw fennel, and loved it. She ate it all, I was surprised. A couple of times during the year she'd come in for dinner [ in Bang Café] with one or two of her friends, and to be fair to them all, they'd all munch away on whatever you gave them," he says. The mussels are a favourite of Gaby's, and her younger sister Ciara (two) enjoys them, too.
Having the opportunity to taste such diverse foods, and the palate to appreciate them, seems to be no big deal with the children of chefs, but Lorcan Cribbin believes all children should be encouraged to eat diversely and well. In his position as commissioner general of Euro-Toques, the European community of cooks, he has been involved in several initiatives to promote healthy eating for children and fostering an interest in good food in the younger generation. "We did a Day of Taste in the European Parliament offices in Dublin and brought in fish pies, and lots of different fruit and loads of chocolates with different cocoa contents, and two classes from inner-city schools came in. The kids were great. They tasted everything."
It's a policy he applies to his restaurant, too. "For too long in this country we've dictated to our kids what they should eat, and it's generally dumbed down . . . chicken nuggets or sausages. In the restaurant, if kids come in they can have whatever they want. They're tomorrow's customers and it's the only way they're going to develop a taste for things. If we're left with a half portion we cook it and let the younger chefs taste it," he says.
Cribbin, who is from Portarlington in Co Laois, grew up on a farm, and acknowledges that he ate very well as a child. "When I was young my mam and dad had a few butcher shops. They were very busy people, and we had two old ladies looking after us. Mrs Troy was a trained chef and she used to work in the house. To keep us quiet she would let us pick out what we wanted to eat from my mother's Reader's Digest books, and she would cook it. Within reason, you know, like éclairs. We would have had a lot of good meat, and back in those days we kept a pig in the yard, and we had chickens. I thought everybody had this. I didn't differentiate between country life and city life. You just thought, as a young kid, that everybody had this."
With this background, is Cribbin extremely fussy about the standard of meat he buys? "We are fussy about all ingredients. Cooking is simple enough, parts of it have evolved, but the basic thing is you need to buy very good quality ingredients."
Back at the Cribbin home in Ringsend, it's not all foie gras and truffles, however. "Roast chicken with gravy," is what Lorraine Cribbin, who works part-time in Goodbody Stockbrokers and is responsible for cooking most of the family meals, says her daughters most like to eat. Like most kids, though, Gaby has been through the "won't eat anything green" phase, and her dad says, "she doesn't eat everything, and sometimes, like a lot of parents, we have to bribe".
Cribbin has been through some of the top kitchens here and in London, and is on first-name terms with some of the best-known names in the business. "I used to work with Gordon Ramsay and I know Marco, I used to work for Marco." So how was the tempest to work for? "Very good. He was a very focused guy back in those days, in Harvey's [ in London]. He would have looked after the chefs best of all, as long as you were prepared to work hard and didn't make any stupid mistakes - or if you did you owned up straight away. He was an amazing talent in his day. Look at White Heat, the book he did over 20 years ago, and look at modern food; apart from the fact that they dress the plates a little bit more now, the content is much the same. He was way ahead of his time, a great chef."
Lorcan's brother Gavin works with him in Bang Café, and I wonder if there will be future generations of Cribbin family chefs? Before Lorcan gets a chance to answer, Lorraine, who worked in the industry with her husband during their years in London, has her say: "It's too hard. The hours are too much, especially for a girl."
But Lorcan is open to the idea. "I would say it's a good career; it's an interesting career. I don't think I would have done anything else. No two days are the same. Yes, I would encourage them. But if you're going to do it, you have to start when you're young and you must go and work in the best places.
"What we're starting to see now is a lot of people choosing cooking as their second career, older people come and asking can they come into the kitchen. I sit them down and say 'Do you realise you could be working 70 hours a week? Do you have a girlfriend? You might only see her on a Sunday.' It's a very different life, and it does become a way of life."
You can see Lorcan Cribbin cooking in the Drumms Chefs' Demo Theatre on Friday evening, June 12th. You can sample dishes from Bang Café each day at the festival. See www.tastefestivals.ie
OLIVER DUNNE, head chef at Bon Appétit Restaurant and Brasserie in Malahide, admits that he "never ate a vegetable" until he was 19. His four-year-old son Evan, on the other hand, is treated to as wide a range of flavours and textures in his food as his parents, Oliver and his fiancée Sabine, can lay their hands on. "We buy all sorts of things, even things I wouldn't be particularly fond of, to open his mind to as many tastes as possible."
Dunne believes that children’s taste buds develop according to what their parents feed them. “We like the things that our mothers had in the fridge,” he says. In the Dunne family home in Malahide, there is always a supply of fruit, so that father and son can make their favourite smoothies, or “magic juices” as Evan calls them.
“He can list off everything that goes into a smoothie,” Dunne says proudly, “but then again he also knows the name of every train in Thomas the Tank Engine.” Dunne junior is also a dab hand at making scrambled eggs, whisking cream and salt into the eggs and stirring them in a pan while Dad looks on. They also enjoying baking together. “Chocolate muffins, sponge cakes, Rice Krispie buns, things like that – we haven’t gone on to souffles yet,” Dunne says wryly. “Everything gets covered in hundreds and thousands and chocolate buttons.”
The fact that father and son get to spend quality time together in the kitchen has come about due to Dunne’s decision not to work both lunch and dinner shifts, now that he is established and his restaurant is a major success – gaining a Michelin star within 12 months of opening.
“You sacrifice a hell of a lot to be a chef. For the first nine months of Evan’s life I didn’t see him. If you’re working 17 hours a day six days a week you become a social misfit – I couldn’t hold a conversation because I didn’t know what was going on in the world outside the kitchen.”
Dunne spent these long hours in kitchens as diverse as the Independent Pizza company, where he started out, to the rarified world of three-star Restaurant Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road in London, which got its third star while he was on staff there.
“I was working in a shoe shop, Korkys in Henry Street – I actually took over from Ronan Keating when he went off to do Boyzone – and part-time at Independent Pizza, and they offered me the job of commis when they opened Gotham Cafe. I didn’t even know what a commis was.”
But now, with the career-building graft behind him, Dunne can afford to spend more time with his growing family – he and his French fiancée are expecting their second child in November. The couple met when Sabine was restaurant supervisor in the Clarence Hotel and Oliver was in the kitchen. Sabine does most of the cooking at home - “she’s a great cook” - and has also been teaching Evan to speak French. “I’m so jealous of him, I’m 10 years trying to learn it,” Dunne says.
The family eat out together a lot, and Dunne welcomes children in his restaurant. “I love having kids in Bon Appétit; it’s no problem if they’re well behaved. We take Evan everywhere. He’s good, he knows how to behave in restaurants.” So far, four-year-old Evan has chalked up visits to several big name restaurants, the pinnacle being lunch at Michelin three-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea.
How did the staff react when presented with such a young diner? “They were a bit nervous, I suppose in case he was going to kick up. But he was perfect,” says his proud father. So, with all those gastronomic experiences under his belt, what does Evan most like to eat? “Chicken, chips and ketchup!”