The Cork dynasties

Ivan Allen, Kay O'Connell and I Bill Patterson are three names synonymous with the 'best of Cork food and eating, and their deaths…

Ivan Allen, Kay O'Connell and I Bill Patterson are three names synonymous with the 'best of Cork food and eating, and their deaths in recent weeks make us realise how much they respectively contributed to our food culture, and how much they will be missed.

As part of a book which I have just completed, Myrtle Allen recently wrote to me about the origins of Ballymaloe House: "I suppose I was lucky I didn't knowanything except how to satisfy a gourmet husband and how to handle the products I had to hand, which I had enough experience to realise were superb. In 1964, Ireckoned the food I could put on our family table could be increased in volume without detracting from its quality and could not be worse than what was onoffer in other restaurants in and around Cork."

In fact, satisfying that gourmet husband - Ivan Allen - was to be the catalyst for the most significant Irish cook of the century, and while attention has rightly centred on Myrtle Allen for her work in the Ballymaloe kitchens, I thinkIvan Allen, with his genial, assured personality, gave to Ballymaloe its aesthetic sensibility. His judgment with wine and art was always a major factor of the house, and a major part of its success. In the truest sense, he wasan aesthete and a gourmet, and enjoyed both attributes without a jot of pretension.

Happily, of course, the business continues, with countless members of the family continuing to make Ballymaloe the sublime enchantment it has always been.

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Kay O'Connell was such a fixture of the English Market in Cork that many of us will wonder how it can exist without her. O'Connell's fish stall is, I think, the finest in the country, and for many years now Kay's sons, Pat and Paul, have ably and expertly assisted her in running the business.

"I used to go with mother to the fish auctions at Coal Quay at seven in the morning," says Pat O'Connell. "We worked together for as long as I can remember. I used to wheel the fish back to the market for her, and of course then I'd be late for school, so there were plenty of slaps on the hand for the sake of the business." Through all the changes the English Market has seen, Kay O'Connell was a stalwart of the institution for 35 years, and we can be thankful that, with Pat and Paul O'Connell, this noble family business continues, espousing the same endless virtues of quality and inimitable service.

Bill Patterson cooked in numerous establishments in the UK before settling in Qysterhaven, near Kinsale, with his wife, Sylvia, and opening the Oystercatcher restaurant. His cooking was a joyous thing, a direct echo of his own extraordinary joie de vivre. I can best illustrate his bonhommie by telling of a day when we went to the restaurant with a television crew to film a sequence with Bill. We wanted him to make his legendary oyster sausage, just one of his fabulous creations, and we had about three or four minutes of screen, out of a half-hour programme, to allow him to do it.

Sound and cameras and lights I were set up in the kitchen, and Bill began Jokes. Wisecracks. Banter. Stories. Techniques. Tips. After 25 minutes we had to stop his brilliant monologue to load more film.

After 40 minutes of cooking and joking and quipping, he finally came to a halt. The 40 minutes would have made a terrific programme all on its own, for thiswas the funniest, warmest man imaginable. How the director and editor cut it down I do not know, for it was one of the best performances I have seen.

Like the Allens and the O'Connell's, the Pattersons are a dynasty, and Bill's son, Aaron, is one of the leading young chefs in the Britain, his work in Hambledon Hall acclaimed and respected.