'Irish food is a melting pot of so many different influences.'
Chef JP McMahon has the physical bearing of a pirate crossed with a college professor. As I scan the crowd at the Galway farmers market on a recent morning, he’s hard to miss: ample red beard, wire-rimmed glasses, and arms tattooed with portraits of David Bowie, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett.
McMahon stops to chat with a couple from Texas who had dined at his flagship restaurant, Aniar, the night before, making their way through its eight-course tasting menu with lamb neck cooked sous vide and roast beets served on twigs. The Michelin-starred restaurant has run at a loss since it opened in 2011, surviving on a mix of tourist traffic and the subsidizing support of his thriving tapas bar, Cava, and its sibling, Tartare, a natural wine bar and café up the street.
“In Ireland, generally the best chefs all go abroad,” says McMahon. “We haven’t matured enough as a food culture to keep them here.” For more than a decade, he’s tackled the Sisyphean task of trying to change that. “Given a different set of circumstances, I could have easily just finished a PhD in art history and written books and probably set up a symposium in art history,” he says. “But food kept calling me back.”
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