Jess Murphy - Kai's the Limit / Best of Ireland

Celebrated chef Jess Murphy is currently in the middle of writing a new cookbook, which no doubt will be eagerly snapped up by the country’s foodies. So what’s the culinary focus going to be this time?
“It’s a Kai cookbook,” explains Murphy. “But there’s nothing that makes you hate yourself more than writing a cookbook. I have to have it proofread 10 million times because I can’t spell!”
This perhaps, is the best introduction anyone could have to Kai’s head chef, founder and owner Jess Murphy. She’s diligent, candid and warm. It’s no wonder she’s been in business for 13 years. Murphy found Ireland the long way round. “I left New Zealand in 1999,” she explains. “I’d lived in Australia and worked in the UK, then I went back home and I didn’t like it. After that, I moved to Dublin and worked for Kevin Thornton for a year”.

Jess Murphy at Kai restaurant, Galway. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Working under Thornton, the first Irish chef to hold two Michelin stars, cannot have been easy.
“It was like running a marathon for a year, to be honest,” says Murphy. “I don’t know how they actually stuck it out.  It’s full on, running a business, let alone having the pressure of two Michelin stars. But it was a great learning experience. A lot of that set me up to run my own business.”
“It was full on, it was just crazy!” she continues. “I had just come from New Zealand. Little old me was there, and then Bertie Ahern would be in having dinner, or Bono or Michael Stipe from R.E.M. You’d just be like, ‘Okay, I don’t know if I’m living in the real world or not.’”

Jess Murphy at Kai restaurant, Galway. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

But these are not Murphy’s dream dinner party guests. If she could cook for anyone, living or dead, it would be “Julia Childs or Rory O’Connell… If I’m cooking for somebody, I want to be intimidated by them.”
Still, Murphy had other ambitions, as she explains.
“Big cities aren’t my thing,” she says. “So I was like, you know what? I’m over it. I’m from New Zealand and I wanted to be by the beach. So I moved to Galway, and ran into a bunch of sounders and started my career here. Galway is so special for me – we’re all a tight knit community. All the restaurants In Galway, we all have the same suppliers.
“I feel like most of us row the same boat. There might be finer dining and there might be more Kai styles, like farm to fork, but I really feel like everybody’s pushing in the same direction.”
Other small businesses are not seen as a threat by Murphy, but something to be embraced.
“I always felt like when we first opened Kai, because it was a recession, that I had to make sure that we’re utilising everything in the neighbourhood,” she says. “From the launderette, to Health and Herbs who made our tea, to buying newspapers off Mike who had a little new newsagents… He’s passed away now, but all that kind of stuff. Every little business we could help out.

Jess Murphy at Kai restaurant, Galway. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

“It’s really tricky to open a business in Galway and find a building. I’d been working in Galway for about nine years, and Kai was a florist shop. The people who owned the flower shop used to come into a restaurant where I worked at the time. They said, ‘We’re retiring, would you like to take it over? We actually have a wine and restaurant licence!’
“I said, ‘Okay!’ I didn’t ask them how much the rent was or anything like that. I was just so naive! I think I have always been really naive and I’m self-made. So every bit of money I have put into it has been mine. The money doesn’t come from an investor. I am the investor.”
Murphy continues on the theme of local camaraderie.
“Everybody in Galway would know somebody who made something on the menu, or grew something on the menu,” she says. “Somebody who made the bread, or who makes the honey that we’re using. Or their flatmates would work in Kai, and I think that’s what makes Kai special.
“It’s about loving the locals who come into the restaurant and watching their kids grow up. I always wanted to run a restaurant where people’s kids came in on their first dates, and I’m just like this lady that is there cooking. I always imagined that.”
But there are other aspects too.
“It’s not all kittens and rainbows,” says Murphy. “It’s a lot of hard work and unblocking of sinks, and stuff flooding and plughole clean-outs, and all sorts of stuff on top of that.”
That acknowledged, Jess Murphy admits there is nowhere she would rather be.
“Kai means food, but it’s also a sense of place,” she says. “It’s where I wanted to stand in front of an oven for a long time. I want to cook with love. We own the Hpi Bakery down the road as well, which is a pastry kitchen. That’s named after the Maori name for hops, because it’s above a bar.”
The chef says her Maori background, and being surrounded by Irish people, has made for a nice mix.
“Living in Galway for 20 years, the Irish language is mixed into what I know, because I studied Maori in school,” she notes. “There was a sign in Irish in Arás na Gael, the Irish club that we have here. I could understand what the sign meant, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the first time I’ve actually been able to understand what it means!’”
However, this has not encouraged the restaurateur to order in Irish in her favourite coffee shop, Plámas:
“They are like, ‘do you want to say it in Irish’, and I’m like ‘no I’m in a hurry, leave me alone!’”
When Murphy is not in a hurry, she knows exactly how she wants to spend her time.
“The perfect day in Galway starts with walking the prom, kicking the ball. Going to Kelly’s for coffee. Then I’ll walk into town. If it’s a Saturday, I’ll go to the farmers’ market. Have oysters for breakfast. Mooch around. Have another coffee. Meet up with mates. Go to Sheridan’s, buy some cheese.
“In the afternoon, go for a pint to the Beerhouse or any of the boozers around the West End, where I live. I’m getting too old to sit in a restaurant for too long. So I love casual eating – anything like Ruíbín, Cava or Moran’s on the weir. I like to eat and watch the rugby.”

• Kai, 22 Sea Road, Galway. Tel: (091) 526 003. kairestaurant.ie