Upon mature reflection: Dylan McGrath takes the stand in the new Hot Press

The enfant terrible of Irish cooking 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 he meets our man Stuart Clark in the newly opened Shelbourne Social.

“I was fucking fucked,” he says in typically forthright fashion when asked about his back. “I had an operation and my body didn’t heal properly. One side of it was just dead. It’s been a long haul, coming up to three years, to get back to some sort of decent health. When I could walk, I was hobbling around with a stick. I couldn’t exercise and put on weight. I was in physio again today. As a young person your mentality is that you’re bulletproof. But you’re not.”
McGrath is thrilled to be cooking up a storm AGAIN in Shelbourne Social, one of the key components of the One Ballsbridge development where a penthouse will cost you north of €6,000.
“There’s a brilliant pot of prawns with a corn stock that you mix at the table,” he says running through his current favourites on the menu. “We’re tossing the pappardelle into whole wheels of Parmesan. I’m doing a stew at the minute where we grill the raclette cheese and, again, scrape it into the stew at the table.
You just rip up some good chicken we’ve smoked in-house and have it with, maybe, a little side-car of foie gras mashed potatoes. Or we’ll bring you a whole trout. They’re not high-end Michelin-pleasing dishes, they’re crowd-pleasers.”
Dylan hasn’t given up the Michelin Star fight, though.
“I’m actually in talks at the minute to do a small, little restaurant that allows a handful of guys to cook in a specific way,” he reveals. “Very high end, you know, sweet breads and truffles.”
Having grown up in West Belfast, he has lots to say about Brexit and the impact it could have on the Peace Process.
“Never underestimate how bad the remaining bad guys are,” he proffers. “If there’s a hard border, they’ll look to exploit it in all sorts of different ways.”
Elsewhere, Dylan rules out dating a vegan ("It’d be a bit like going out with a devil worshipper. It’s sacrilegious somehow”); reflects on the sometimes toxic nature of his profession (“When I was doing Mint, I’d sleep for three or four hours a night. It was relentless. I didn’t stop pushing my body, all day long”; and the economics of eating out (“You’d be surprised the amount of restaurants that look like they’re doing well but are struggling. Standards cost money. There’ll be a lot of openings this year, but there will also be a lot of closures").