Road to fame

BACK in the days when the Irish palate was notoriously conservative, Derry Clarke’s father and his brother Joe dealt in everything from continental cheeses and Danish rusks to snails and frogs’ legs.

In the warehouse on Wellington Quay in the centre of Dublin there was a treasure trove of edibles and drinkables: Huntley and Palmer biscuits, rusks, maple syrup, caviar, chestnut puree, Schwartz spices, smoked salmon, bottles of carrot juice for the health food shops, bags of whole spices imported from Indonesia, and vast wheels of Brie.

This is presumably where Derry (now world famous for his amazing L'Ecrivain restaurant in Dublin) got a taste for fine food. Home was a big, rambling house in Clonskeagh.