Kathy Foley

Was away last weekend and forgot to bring home a copy of the ST. Then kept forgetting to procure a copy during the week. So this is as filed, not quite as published.

March 4th, 2007

It was an innocent request. We were in the local pasta’n’pizza joint. You know the kind of place – checked plastic tablecloths and candles wedged in old Chianti bottles. The food arrived in double-quick time, but when I tasted my spaghetti carbonara, I was underwhelmed. I called the waiter over and asked if he could shave white truffle over the pasta for me.

Within 30 seconds, Giovanni the chef came barrelling through the kitchen door and made straight for our table. Local rumour has it he’s from Passage West and is really called John. At that moment, Giovanni/John was not happy.

“Who tha f**k you thinka you are?” he roared. “You come in my ristorante and you ask for things not on menu, things I don’t even know. I go especially to cash-and-carry today to buy carbonara sauce! Then I heat it up in a saucepan because the microwave is broken. My heart is scalded cooking for you langers. Get out!”

Next thing we knew, my fellow diners and I were outside in the rain, picking strands of spaghetti from our clothing and looking askance at one another.

Of course, that didn’t actually happen. No one demands truffle shavings in a cheapo “Italian” restaurant, no more than anyone requests foie gras in a sandwich bar or caviar in a chipper.

So should diners in Michelin-starred restaurants ask for chips if they’re not on the menu? I don’t think so. It’s like asking a Nobel laureate novelist to write a simple story with no complicated metaphors or a Turner Prize-winning artist to doodle a still life of a bowl of apples and a pretty jug.

Still, a restaurant is a business and if customers ask for chips, they should get chips.

A diner at Thornton’s restaurant in Dublin got chips last weekend. He was part of a group of seven friends celebrating after the Irish victory at Croke Park. When his main course of venison arrived, he thought it looked “insubstantial” and requested chips.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get them until he was perusing the dessert menu so he sent them back. Within seconds, they reappeared in front of him, slammed on the table by Kevin Thornton, the restaurant’s owner and head chef. “They were cooked specially for you, so you eat them, you d***head,” Thornton reportedly bellowed at his customer.

Thornton frequently compares cooking to theatre and likens serving food to putting on a performance. After the chip-slamming curtain raiser of this high drama, Act Two allegedly involved Thornton clenching his fists and calling the group w***ers. The dramatic finale came when the chef peremptorily chucked the group out the door onto Stephen’s Green.

Although Thornton refused to go into details afterwards, he made it clear that it was not the request for chips that had so incensed him but rather the attitude of the diners concerned. He had no problem serving chips, he told Joe Duffy on RTE’s Liveline programme, adding the deliciously pointed remark that his restaurant often provided them for children.

I’ve never eaten in his restaurant but Thornton’s Gordon Ramsay-esque performance hasn’t deterred me from going. Normally a stickler for good service, I was quite stirred by his outburst. It was indicative of his passion and relentless drive for perfection in cooking. Maybe he’s not the most pleasant fellow but at least he has fire in his belly. At least he cares.

I’d far rather savour spectacular food made by a grumpy chef than plough through second-rate grub dished up with oleaginous false bonhomie, as I have done in other expensive restaurants. I’m quite thrilled by the idea of Thornton stalking around his kitchen, demanding nothing but the best from his chefs and popping out occasionally to harangue diners.

Thornton is a genius, arguably the best chef in Ireland. The New York Times called him a “star”. He was the first and only Irish chef ever to be awarded two Michelin stars. Although his restaurant has since lost one of those stars, it is still producing world-class food.

Oddly, anecdotal evidence suggests Thornton’s is not always packed to capacity and it is not a particularly large restaurant. If it were in London, Paris or New York, diners would need to reserve months in advance to secure a table. But not in Dublin and it’s hard to know why.

It’s not the cost. Thornton’s is stomach-churningly expensive – the 14-course chef’s tasting menu is €180 – but there are plenty of Irish people who could afford to eat there. The skyrocketing sales of designer handbags, titanium golf clubs and other luxury goods attest to that.

Perhaps it has more to do with the lingering ‘food is fuel’ mentality in this country. Why would anyone shell out the guts of €200 just to line their stomach before heading out for a feed of pints? After all, it’s just food. This attitude is compounded by an inverse snobbery around fine dining. Admitting an interest in high-end cuisine is liable to get you accused of having notions of upperosity.

Consequently, Thornton does not get the custom or the respect he deserves. Had he won a silver medal at the World Tiddlywinks Championship instead of garnering two Michelin stars, he probably would have been feted with an open-top bus trip and the freedom of Dublin. So I can understand his frustration, not that it really excuses him from effing and blinding at paying customers. 

The controversy engendered by the specially made chips was the second episode of bad publicity for Thornton in a month. A fortnight beforehand, he had lambasted another Irish chef, Richard Corrigan, and questioned his allegiance to Ireland because Corrigan had cooked for the British queen.

The timing of this publicity has been providential for Thornton, as his restaurant has just reopened after extensive renovations. If his bad-tempered posturing is merely designed to drum up more business, well, I don’t mind. At least the new incarnation of Thornton’s serves canapés at €3.50 a pop, putting Michelin-starred food within reach of most people. What’s more, he has only thrown people twice in 15 years so anyone who goes will probably even get to finish their food.