The Hot Press Interview with Dylan McGrath

Lifestyle & Sports
06 Mar 19

Dylan McGrath at the Shelbourne Social Restaurant. Copyright Miguel Ruiz

The enfant terrible of Irish cooking, DYLAN McGRATH, has grown up but there’s still plenty of fire in his belly – and wildly inventive food coming out of his kitchens. Michelin stars, veganism, Brexit, bombs, Beyoncé and the agonising illness that threatened his career are all on the menu as STUART CLARK meets him in the newly opened Shelbourne Social.

Born on August 4, 1977 in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, chef Dylan McGrath spent his first six years in Carlow before being transplanted to the Falls Road at the heart of The Troubles.

“In Carlow we played cops and robbers, in Belfast it was hoods and Provis – the IRA and car thieves,” he noted when Hot Press first interviewed him back in 2009. “A lot of my friends were joyriders who, caught by the IRA, would’ve been either shot or given a heavy punishment beating. A bomb would go off in the distance, and you wouldn’t even remark on it because that was your everyday reality.”

“Fucked out” (as he eloquently put it) of Portrush Catering College, Dylan learned his chef-ly skills in Belfast’s starred Roscoff restaurant and in London, where he also received plenty of life lessons.