Top chef Kevin relishing fresh challenge
Lifestyle - Kevin Dunne, who runs the White Gables Restaurant in Moycullen with his wife Ann, celebrates his 50th anniversary as a chef in 2020. It’s also 30 years since the couple opened their popular business, which has since expanded to include a shop, bakery and café. This is a tough time for people in the hospitality world but the Dunnes are rising to the occasion, as they tell JUDY MURPHY.
In a cheffing career that has spanned 50 years, Kevin Dunne has worked in top establishments including the Shelbourne in Dublin, the Dorchester in London, Parknasilla in Kerry and the Great Southern in Galway.
That was before he and his wife, Ann, decided to set up on their own. They opened the White Gables in Moycullen, 30 years ago, an establishment that’s renowned for its classical food and quality service. So, 2020 is a year full of milestones for Kevin – but it’s a strange time to be celebrating.
In fact, when Kevin mentions that he’s been a chef for 50 years, you might wonder if he should be cocooning, rather than cooking meals for collection in the shop that adjoins their restaurant. Not to mention his work delivering White Gables cocooning hampers around Galway.
“Absolutely not,” is the answer as he explains he started training at the age of 14 in the Shelbourne Hotel.
From Drumcondra, Kevin knew from childhood that he wanted to be a chef. The lightbulb moment was when he joined the Boy Scouts.
“I loved going on trips and cooking outside,” he says simply, “I could pull it together.”
In the early 1960s, a talent for cooking was an advantage in a country that wasn’t renowned for its cuisine.
“I remember there was no bread in the shops,” he says, recalling there was a bakers’ strike at one point. “I was queuing with my mother for bread and said ‘what are we doing this for?’ I went from there to baking.”
He applied to train in the Shelbourne, then as now one of the country’s top hotels, and went in as a commis chef, starting at the bottom, “on the potatoes and turnips”.
He progressed and after qualifying, went on to work in London and Germany. Eventually, he returned to Ireland and one Christmas, went to Parknasilla in Kerry, covering for one of the regular chefs. The former manor house in Sneem was the flagship hotel of the Great Southern group, where Silver Service still prevailed.
It was there he met Ann, who was from Sneem where her parents ran a garage.
“I knew she was the person,” he says, “It’s just something you can’t explain, just a feeling.”
The couple, who have two grown-up children, Jack and Molly, went on to create one of the most successful restaurants in the West of Ireland, but have never rested on their laurels.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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