He continued: “My dessert, Trifle Derry Girls, is born of my love for the show and an episode in particular where Ma Mary borrows Michelle’s Aunt Sarah’s “big bowl”.

“This scene really struck a chord with me when I first saw it as the same was a weekly occurrence in my house growing up. My mum and Aunty Karen were constantly sharing each other’s “big bowls” depending on whose house we were going to for tea.

“When I read the brief and realised it was related to broadcasting, I knew my dessert just had to be a trifle of some sort, and no trifle is more classic than a retro sherry trifle.”

A friend who works for Copeland reminded him that their  Navy Strength was aged in Oloroso sherry casks and the residual sherry from the casks was shipped to him in Padstow.

“I combined the sherry and the gin to make the jelly, and used some more to soak these incredible moelleux raisins and finally the Trifle Derry Girls was born,” he explained.

“Being a proud Irish man, it’s great to see so many incredible producers like Gareth creating truly special food and drink items on home turf.

“I also used a stunning apple ice wine by Mark Jenkinson at Anum Ull in Co. Meath, and I know first-hand that what Peter Hannan of Hannan Meats is doing with his grass-fed Glenarm Shorthorn is nothing short of excellent and deserves the rave reviews it gets.

“I think it’s really important to remember where you came from and at my roots is a great sense of gratefulness and respect for the world class produce that’s available across Northern Ireland. When it comes to running a restaurant it’s important to have that innate awareness though that hospitality is so much more than just the food on the plate.”

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Chef, Jonny Taylor (36), who comes originally from Antrim, had been head chef at Shed Bistro on the Ormeau Road in Belfast for a period before he and his wife, Christina bought the 50-seater venture from its previous owner at the end of last year.

A small initial refurb followed before the bistro was closed for a nine-day stretch in July to allow for a more detailed facelift, including the installation of a bar. Since then, the couple say that business has risen by as much as 15 per cent.

The Belfast project is the next logical step in a career that’s seen Jonny don his whites in an array of venues around the UK. He began his kitchen career at the age of 15 in The Stables, Antrim, but he’d been used to cooking from a very young age. His mum worked away a lot, he says, and it was his job to make sure that the rest of the family were fed.

Jonny continued to work part-time at The Stables during his latter years in high school, and when a careers advisor told him to broaden the scope of his experience, he secured a position at the nearby Dunadry hotel, eventually moving on to a succession of other venues.

He took on an NVQ at the Northern Regional College in Ballymena and by the age of 21, he found himself back at The Dunadry, where head chef, Clifford Caskey, took him under his wing:

‘He was very passionate and patient and he taught me a lot,’ recalls Jonny. ‘I was a junior sous chef and I worked in the bistro, but I had Clifford tortured to let me work in the restaurant and to show me new things….Clifford was very good and he drove my passion and curiosity, showing me new flavour combinations that I had never thought of before. His knowledge of food was incredible.’

Jonny remained at The Dunadry for about two years then, while on holiday with a friend, he met a girl from Glasgow and eventually moved to the city, where he worked in a succession of jobs. He ended up in Grill on the Corner as a sous chef, then, the company offered him a post at the Grill in the Alley in Manchester, at that time, the biggest steakhouse in the city. Jonny was 26 at that stage and he stayed there for about a year.

‘All the travelling around, working in different venues, it taught me a lot about myself as a person. It taught me to become more self-sufficient and it made me grow up,’ Jonny tells LCN. ‘Because of where I was, I couldn’t rely on family. I just had the friends that I had made along the way.’

At 30, Jonny moved to Edinburgh and took on the role of head chef at Jamie’s Italian in the city. It was a very busy restaurant, routinely doing around 600 covers a day.

‘I’d already had similar experience at some of the other places I’d worked, so the volume wasn’t that much of a challenge, but this was a completely different style of food which took me some time to get used to,’ says Jonny. ‘I was only there for nine months, but I was working 90-hour weeks and I just got burned out.’

On the positive side, however, he met Christina, who also has a strong background in catering, on his first day at Jamie’s Italian. The couple have been together for six years now and married for three.

They returned to NI together two years ago. Both had been in high-paying jobs in Edinburgh, but they still found the price of homes there prohibitive and so came back to Northern Ireland in order to get onto the property ladder.

A job as executive head chef at George Best Belfast City Airport didn’t work out the way Jonny had expected and so he left and took on some agency work. When he heard that the owner of Shed Bistro on the Ormeau Road was looking for help, he took that on too:

‘Because the owner wasn’t from a catering background, so she let me get on with it,’ he says.

Eventually, she offered to sell the business to Jonny and Christina and they took it over in November.

‘This was always a great restaurant and it was always quite busy, but where I think it fell down before was in kitchen management and in ensuring a consistent quality of staff,’ remarks Jonny. ‘I started correcting that even before I bought it and we’ve been steadily improving things since then.’

The couple’s long-term plan is to make sure that Shed is as busy as it can be. Ultimately, however, Jonny says he’d like to open a second steakhouse-type venue somewhere in Belfast:

‘’That’s my background and there’s only so much that we can do with the space that we have here,’ he says. ‘I can’t say too much more now, but that’s definitely going to happen.

‘I have worked for a number of big companies and the thing they taught me was that you don’t ever stop doing what you’re doing. I’ve learned from looking at the likes of Jamie [Oliver] what happens when you take your eye off the ball. Things can fall apart very quickly, so we want to be constantly pushing forward.’

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When it comes to eating out in Belfast these days, diners are certainly embracing the rash of innovative, high quality venues that have been opening their doors. However, they’re often equally excited about anything quirky or unusual that appears on the restaurant scene.

And that’s certainly the case with the Gypsy Kitchen, a prolific pop-up supper club that’s been operating very successfully at various locations in Belfast since December 2017.

The men behind the venture are local brothers Chris and Gerard McQuillan, who some readers will already recognise as the proprietors of Freight – an upmarket restaurant located inside old shipping containers at CS Lewis Square in the east of the city.

Chris (26) and Gerard (37), launched the Gypsy Kitchen six months before Freight and it’s been consistently successful, evolving into a monthly supper club experience that always takes place at a different location and routinely attracts anything from 80 to 110 diners.

Their first evening, which was held at The Lamppost Café on the Upper Newtownards Road, attracted 32 diners, many of them family and friends, and that was twice what the brothers were expecting.

‘It’s a measure of how popular this type of event is,’ says Chris, who has a strong background in mixology and has previously won a regional heat of the prestigious Bacardi Legacy cocktail competition. ‘We started off in a small café that most people probably didn’t even know was there and two years later, we’re popping up in Yugo, one of the most popular restaurants in the city.’

In recent times, Chris and Gerard have opened their pop-up at established venues such as Jonny Elliott’s Edo restaurant on Upper Queen Street; Blaclist in Little Donegal Street and The Berliner on Garfield Street.

‘You can look at it almost as an underground movement with a restaurant background,’ explains Chris. ‘It’s part of a trend that you’ll see right across Europe. Gerard and I have seen pop-ups in Berlin that people are doing in their own homes and it’s a massive trend in Brooklynn for people to have supper clubs in their houses. We wanted to tap into this wave of new-style dining.’

One of the first things that the pair did was design a menu that was seasonal and exciting but which would also lend itself easily to preparation in any size of kitchen.

Every Gypsy Kitchen evening will include a DJ and depending on the venue, diners can find themselves staying to dance long after the plates have been cleared.

‘It’s been called ‘a rave with fine dining’’, says Chris. ‘It’s one reason why someone might choose to come to us rather than visit a city centre restaurant.’

The Gypsy Kitchen normally meets once a month, but its mounting popularity has seen it appearing every three weeks in recent times.

‘The priority now is to keep things exciting,’ says Chris. ‘There are more and more people getting interested in this way of dining, young creative people that are looking for things that help to change the way that people go out to dine.

‘Possibly, in the future, we could look at a continuous supper club. Perhaps Gypsy Kitchen could run every Friday and Saturday evening.

‘We both have full-time jobs elsewhere, but when we came up with this idea, it 100 per cent had to do with putting the love back into what we do and back into the food that we cook and that’s still the case.’

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Danny Millar pauses in his preparations for evening service at his new eatery in the centre of Belfast.

At 47, he has embarked on his first solo foray into the thriving but fickle arena of food and drink, throwing open the doors of Stock Kitchen and Bar towards the end of July.

The restaurant, located on the mezzanine level inside St. George’s Market in the centre of Belfast, is a deliberately uncomplicated tribute to Danny’s enduring belief that when properly and honestly presented, good food will speak for itself.

‘We keep the food simple,’ he says. ‘I want it to be a reflection of what I’m about. At my age, I’m not into foams and gels…In here, we serve fish on the bone, simple grilled steak, crab claws, langoustines and plenty of local vegetables. Sometimes, I think chefs get carried away with a sense of their own importance rather than focusing on how good the product really is.’

This new venture is a homecoming of sorts for Danny, who comes originally from the city’s New Lodge district. He says he’s getting back to his roots after 11 years as a partner and executive head chef with the Balloo Inns group in County Down.

‘I was running three venues and I just wasn’t cooking as much as I would have liked,’ says Danny of his decision to go it alone. ‘I was spending more and more time managing and I just wanted to get back to what I crave, which is fundamentally cooking…There were a lot of things I could have gone and done, but I didn’t want to be told what to do anymore, I wanted to be able to do it for myself.’

That desire to cook has been in him since the start when he turned down a chance at A-levels in favour of catering studies at Belfast Met and a part-time post at the Strand restaurant on the Stranmillis Road.

Even before that, he recalls the excitement of a regular Wednesday afternoon cooking class at primary school –that was what really got hooked him, he says:

‘It was the giving, the generosity of making something for someone and them saying, ‘Wow, that’s great’.’

Discipline

After he graduated, a flurry of kitchen posts followed; he worked at The Portaferry Hotel and in England at a pub called The White Hart. Then he went to Germany and spent four formative years as a commis chef in the Bad Wildbad region of the Black Forest.

‘I really loved that,’ he says. ‘The experience taught me discipline above all else. It was such a well-organised work environment, the rota was up on the wall three months ahead.’

By the time he was 25, his mum had taken ill and he returned to NI and went to work for the late Robbie Millar at Shanks where he spent a couple of years before moving to his first head chef’s post at The Narrows in Portaferry.

‘At that point, opening my own place wasn’t part of my thought process at all,’ he says. ‘I wanted to be a head chef, but owning my own restaurant is only something I’ve thought about in the last few years. I think I just got to the point where I didn’t want to listen to anyone telling me what to do anymore.’

Before his stint at Balloo, Danny spent four years at the former Cayenne in Belfast with chef, Paul Rankin:

‘All the experiences I’ve had were different,’ he says, looking back. ‘As you get older, you learn to be more mature and more responsible because you have to pay people’s wages and you have to look after them. Over all this time, I’ve been influenced by many people I worked with, Robbie was great, I learned so much about flavours from him and Her Meyer, who I worked with in Germany, was very well organised, very disciplined.’

Fresh

His new 50-cover restaurant has room for 30 more on the veranda and the full-service public bar accommodates a further 30.

‘I love the architecture of this place, it’s beautiful here,’ he says. ‘It’s a beautiful space. I love the way the windows look, places just aren’t built like this anymore, this is a great room. And the feedback is great, people love it, they love the space and we keep the food very simple.’

Danny sources his fish just downstairs in the market where he chooses from produce so fresh that sometimes, it still has rigor mortis.

He put this new project together with help from close pal, Andy Rea, proprietor of the Mourne Seafood Bar and Danny’s friend for more than 30 years. In the kitchen is head chef, Grainne Donnelly, who was with Danny at Balloo and before that, in Cayenne. Fourteen other staff help to keep things running smoothly.

‘July was quieter than I would have liked,’ concedes Danny. ‘But last week was brilliant and I’m optimistic. Bookings are strong for August and July is always a hard one for Belfast anyway.

‘My priorities now are to get busy in the run-up to Christmas, get the place full and add my bit to the vitality of the great restaurant scene in this city. We are now punching well above our weight here in Northern Ireland, we have some great restaurants here in town and I am very glad to be part of that.’

Does he worry over Brexit? ‘It doesn’t help,’ he says, reflecting on currency fluctuations and the likely impact on the pool of migrant labour. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it, but I’d rather it wasn’t happening.’

Danny Millar doesn’t want to own a chain of restaurants. What he wants to do is cook, he says.

‘I love all this, I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise and I’m certainly not doing it for the money, that’s for sure.

‘I do this because I want people to see that hospitality is great. There are so many great places to go in this city. We have so many great farmers, great cheesemakers, great fish people, we’re definitely one of the best regions in the world now when it comes to food and we’ll give anywhere a run for their money…’

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Darragh Dooley, who comes originally from Galway, is now in post as executive chef at the plush new boutique hotel and spa, which is set to open near Newry at the end of April.

And speaking to LCN this month, Darragh admitted to a few jitters as opening day loomed:

‘Of course I’m a little nervous,’ he said. ‘We have to be sure that we have all our systems in place, we have to have our team together and we have to make sure that the environment is right for all of that.’

The hotel venture itself represents a £12m investment. The grade one listed building, which lay derelict for more than a decade, has been given a new lease of life after being bought by Armagh native, Mick Boyle and his wife, Robin in 2013 for £1.2m.

Darragh was recruited from his post as head chef at Castle Leslie in Co. Monaghan to become the first executive chef at Killeavy. It’s the latest development in a diverse career that’s seen him don his whites in some of the island’s most prestigious kitchens.

He launched his hospitality career while still at school, working part-time at the Cashel House Hotel in Connemara. Eventually, he was given the opportunity to serve a little time in the kitchens at the hotel and he quickly realised that he loved the environment.

Later, when he was studying at GMIT in Galway, Darragh undertook work placement, first at the Roachestown Park Hotel in Cork and then, at the K Club in Co. Kildare, where he stayed for a total of seven years and rose to the position of chef de partie under executive chef Finbarr Higgins.

‘He had a great passion for food and for making sure that all the ingredients were treated correctly,’ recalls Darragh. ‘They always had the best of everything there, fresh truffles, foie gras and so on, it was a great place to work.

‘I loved my time at the K Club and it opened a lot of doors for me when people found that I’d worked there. It also made me want to find a place to work that had the same passion for food as the K Club.’

His next three years were spent at the fabulously quirky, five-star G Hotel & Spa in Galway before an acquaintance from the K Club – Andrew Bradley – persuaded Darragh to join him at the Johnston Estate Hotel & Spa in Co. Meath to help out in the restaurant. After about a year, however, Andrew left for a post at Castle Leslie and Darragh departed for a working break in the Canadian province of Winnipeg.

He spent a year there, working for the Delta Hotel Group, but the focus was very much on banqueting which wasn’t a long-term preference for Darragh. A plea from his old friend, Andrew Bradley, who wanted help at Castle Leslie, was enough to bring him back to Ireland

Ultimately, he spent seven years at the Co. Monaghan retreat, finishing as head chef with responsibility for Snaffles restaurant (two AA rosettes) and Conor’s Bar.

Darragh secured the post at Killeavy after viewing the estate and its ‘farm to fork’ ethos and coming to the conclusion that this was ‘exactly what I was looking for‘.

All the suppliers that I use here are local, I don’t have to go further afield for anything, and I am able to employ local people in the kitchens, says Darragh.

His kitchen team does include one non-local – Dario Percic, a chef from Croatia who, says Darragh, is his ‘right hand man’:

‘He has the same mentality as me, he’s all about the food and the way that we treat the food and preserve the flavours. The fresher the flavours, the less we have to do with them.’

Darragh and his team are currently working to make sure that the food and beverage offering at Killeavy is ready for the April opening, but long-term, Darragh says he is keen to do as much preserving and fermenting as he can on site and to see as much as possible of the produce he requires grown and reared on the estate, to be experienced by local and international guests.

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