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Product Description
Gerry Galvin ( 1942-2013) was best know as one of the most creative chefs at the forefront of Ireland’s culinary development. He was also an influential food writer, a published poet and author of a gastronomic crime thriller.
At the frontier of Irish cuisine for more than four decades, he made an “outstanding contribution” both as a chef and an educator of chefs. This was acknowledged in a special award by Euro-Toques Ireland, part of a European community of chefs formed to protect traditional foods and culinary heritage and committed to sourcing quality ingredients locally. As a founding member of the group, he was selected to be one of its first commissioners by Myrtle Allen of Ballymaloe House.
He was born in Dromcollogher in west Limerick, where his family had a drapery shop, and educated in Newbridge College and at Shannon College of Hotel Management. When he was 17, he cut his culinary teeth in the kitchens of Dublin’s Gresham Hotel, an establishment that counted the rich and the famous among its guests.
Graduating in 1965, he worked in the hospitality sector in England and South Africa before returning to Ireland to manage the Trident Hotel in Kinsale. Having spent another year in London – specifically to gain restaurant experience – he and his wife Marie, sister of journalist Vincent Browne, returned to open the Vintage in Kinsale.
Over the next twelve years, Galvin was to play a significant role in putting the Cork seaside town on the culinary map. However, the family moved to the elegant 17th century Drimcong House in Galway, which for 18 years became one of the country’s leading restaurants.
Something very new, and unusual, was happening. There was much emphasis on the word organic, fresh, and traditional. What did that mean? Many Galway people loved oysters, but here oysters were offered with Clonakilty black pudding, with an onion and apple sauce. Surely some mistake?
There were potted patés and pea soups, baked fish gateau (another mistake?), a spiced roast pork with an apple and thyme sauce, roast duck with a pepper marmalade (that can’t be right), Moroccan and Italian ricotta, couscous and pasta, and then something simple like Marie’s brown bread, and a huge range of Irish cheeses. It was amazing. Suddenly a whole new world of food possibilities was being offered, and after an initial hesitation, Galway took to this wonderful opportunity with all the pleasure and fun that eating and enjoying food entails. Drimcong was a place apart. Associated with special events, either in family or business lives, where food and service was always guaranteed to be a singular and a unique celebration.
Drimcong led the way to a whole new eating experience which gave Galway a succession of top quality restaurants offering innovative and beautifully presented food.
