Robbie Millar may be giving an interview or, later, telling a publisher about the ingredients of his proposed first book but at no point during this busy Saturday evening does he take his eye off the ball. Stopping one of his waitresses in her super efficient tracks, he gently but firmly suggests that one table may need a dessert menu. Like a circus performer whose impossible job it is to keep several china plates spinning simultaneously, his eyes scan the room at the Michelin-starred Shanks Restaurant near Bangor attending to those tiny details that could bring this gastronomically correct operation crashing down about his perfectionist ears.
Millar has his own motivation for such unrelenting vigilance. In January, the restaurant (incongruously located on the site of a pay-as-you-play golf course) retained its Michelin Star for the fifth consecutive year. It is one of only two restaurants in Northern Ireland with the accolade and Millar, now 32, was one of the youngest chefs to be so feted just one year after Shanks opened in 1995.
In the Northern Ireland tradition of husband/wife restaurant unions (started by the royal family of celebrity chef couples, Paul and Jeanne Rankin) Millar's wife Shirley manages Shanks - they met when both worked at the Rankin's Roscoff restaurant. The couple, who live a short drive from the restaurant, have a young baby. Millar can be seen wheeling a buggy around Holywood laden down with baby gear, applying the same practised concentration to fatherhood that he exudes in the kitchen.
He was just 19 when he left catering college in Northern Ireland having been awarded a widely coveted one-year scholarship to Switzerland. The chef, at the Swiss hotel he was placed in, was deliberately tough, Millar remembers, and the hard grind and homesickness saw many budding chefs leave in a matter of weeks. "Wee muggins here just stuck my teeth into it," he said. "When you arrive you don't know what turbot is. When you leave you know not just what it is, but how to cook it, where to buy it and where it comes from - it was like being in the army."
After a year of this physically and mentally exhausting training he needed a holiday. "I went to Greece and met Kristos who approached me about running his restaurant, The Taverna. I told him I didn't want to cook tourist food, swimming in oil, which was the typical stuff available in Greece. He agreed." Millar had landed his first proper job.
The sign on The Taverna, boasting of its Swiss-trained chef, impressed the tourists, particularly the Germans, who flocked to the restaurant where Millar had a free reign and revelled, as he still does, in using the freshest local produce. "We ended up being the busiest restaurant in the whole area," he says. "Normally you didn't have to make reservations at any of the local restaurants, so Kristos was rubbing his hands together."
After a season in The Taverna he returned to the UK taking jobs at a number of London hotels including the Tara and the Copthorne. Here he learnt about the hierarchy of a big kitchen where there were dozen of chefs of varying seniority. At home his family were keeping an eye on the restaurant scene and when in 1989 Paul Rankin returned home to Belfast from his travels, Millar's Mum phoned to let him know.
"I was going home anyway - I wanted to give it a bash. Roscoff was looking for a chef de partie, I rang up and asked for an interview," he said. He says he got the job because he had the same passion for cooking as Rankin. "When Paul asked about the books I had read, I said Albert Roux, Mossiman, we were coming from the same place - the other applicants said they read the Beano," he jokes. A year later he became sous chef and eventually the restaurant was awarded a star.
By this time Millar's own star was in the ascendant and though he was initially sceptical, he and Shirley accepted the proposal from Lady Duffin, who owns the Clandeboyne Estate where the restaurant is located. The year before, the couple had travelled across Europe on a culinary tour of the finest dining rooms.
The fare Miller produces at Shanks is described as modern European cuisine and one of the menu highlights features venison shot that day on the estate. Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall and Brian Kennedy have all frequented the minimalist restaurant designed by Terence Conran, and Millar is expecting the Northern Secretary, Peter Mandelson, to come through the doors any minute.
Sitting in his chef's whites smoking a cigarette he continues to scrutinise the room while still managing to look utterly relaxed. "I find it quite easy," he said when asked about the pressure of maintaining Michelin standards. "But it is a team effort and hard work - it's great for Northern Ireland tourism."