How the Blas na hEireann awards went ahead this year against the odds

Meet some of the winners of Ireland's most prestigious food accolades

William Despard of  Bretzel Bakery, Dublin winner of the Supreme Champion title in the Blás na hÉireann Irish Food Awards for their Pain de Maison Boule  

For William Despard, the past year perfectly encapsulates the vertiginous highs and plummeting lows of the rollercoaster ride that is life under the coronavirus: from fighting desperately in March to keep his recently expanded business afloat to coping with his mother’s death in May to picking up the ultimate accolade at the Blás na hÉireann Irish Food Awards in October.

Born in Limerick and graduating as an electrical engineer, William worked first in the US and then here in Ireland before eventually tiring of the corporate treadmill: “I wanted to be in control of my own destiny rather than just being a 'corporate yes man', the idea was to have a career change that wasn’t based on corporate employment.”

He weighed a number of options — some obviously lucrative yet unfulfilling and others innovative yet highly risky: “Bretzel Bakery happened to be for sale and I was a customer and it was a lot less risky than my other ideas.”

Established in or around 1870 by a Russian immigrant Jew, Bretzel had been a fixture in Dublin for approximately 130 years but was rather wheezing along by the time William set his sights on it in 2000.

“I knew there was hard work on the food side because it was small margins, I had to bet my house but within 18 months I was able to disentangle my own family home from the business loan. I found I could sell more to chefs than the traditional shop customers. Chefs in Dublin wanted something other than sliced pan but not too different — if the crust was too crusty or too challenging there’d be complaints. You had had to bring the general public along as well."

“One chef forgot to put in an order one day and phoned at 11am, thinking I could deliver straight away, but I told him it would take at least four or five hours no matter how much yeast you put in and he said, ‘I don’t give a fuck what you send as long as you send me down some of your wonderfully bockety bread!"

“Cork was always probably five or 10 years ahead of Dublin in terms of food — you had the English Market and Declan Ryan [of Arbutus Bread] was already doing sourdough.”

In 2019, Despard acquired the high-end Le Levain bakery, subsuming the entire operation into Bretzel’s Harold’s Cross operation. [It is this ‘end of the house’ that earned Bretzel this year’s Supreme Champion crown.]

In addition, Bretzel opened a larger production unit in Kilcullen, Co Kildare to cope with their ever-growing foodservice trade and business was very much on the up when Covid 19 came along.

The havoc wreaked was immediate, beginning with their foodservice operation supplying cafes, coffee shops and sandwich bars along with corporate catering operations in multinationals such as LinkedIn.

“We had all these wonderful bakers and we didn’t know what to do with them,” says William. 

"In the third week of March we were looking at putting 45 fantastic people on protective notice. We had lost 75% of business within two weeks and if we didn’t do something, we’d probably have been out of business in four weeks.”

The pandemic staff payment eased the strain and Bretzel repurposed for retail sales: “Retail used to account for 30% of our business but it is now 80%. If we could wave a magic wand and bring back food service …!”

During the height of lockdown, William was putting down an 80-hour week in his efforts to save his buffeted business while, in Limerick, his aged mother in Limerick was having serious health issues.

“One of the reasons I had so much energy was because I couldn’t visit her. My mother was hugely invested in the success of the Bretzel and hugely proud of it and not being able to visit her, it would have been wrong not to put every minute of the day into trying to save the business. I couldn’t complain when I wasn’t able to hop in the car and see her.”

Violet Despard finally passed away on May 5: "She got a week and a half at home and we could visit and talk to her and she went back into hospital late April. She managed her own death very well. My mother was a farmer’s daughter. She would have cooked everything at home — every part of the animal, tongue, heart. She’d bake rather than buy. She’s responsible for my love of food.”

Violet Despard would no doubt have appreciated Bretzel’s Blás accolade.

“Like any year, we are in fabulous company — it’s a pity we didn’t get down to Dingle but there’ll be other years — and it’s a great honour and shows how far we’ve come.”

Billy Sharpe, Irish Gourmet Butter: Waterford Best Artisan for their Lightly Salted Butter

Early on a Saturday morning, in April 2017, Billy and Mary Sharpe set out from Waterford to nearby Dungarvan, to present their new ‘baby’, a range of gourmet butters, at the West Waterford Festival of Food.

Billy says: “Day one, we had no customers but we had product. We set up, dishing out samples and 80% of those who tasted, purchased. The next day was the big market in the town square and by 3pm we were completely sold out of everything. Someone at the market also advised us to enter Blás na hÉireann.”

Irish Gourmet Butter was set up in 2017 by Billy and Mary Sharpe 

Later that year, Irish Gourmet Butter picked up a silver at the Blás awards and otherwise passed the year readying themselves for a proper launch in 2018.

Billy joined Waterford Glass as an apprentice in 1974, eventually working his way up to management. Having spent much of his childhood working on farms, he always had a grá for the ‘Good Life’ and self-sufficiency through working the land. After Waterford Crystal closed he was having a conversation one day with his daughter Bronagh about the demise of ‘good old-fashioned butter’.

“After that, I got cream through one of the creameries and made some handmade butter and she absolutely loved it. It’s softer and creamier, it looks and tastes so different from processed butter. Mary’s grandmother, Breda Conway, was all Ireland butter champion up in the RDS and got three medals in the Cork show in 1935 and 1936 and worked with Mogeely Creamery. All her family came out of the woodwork and all had little stories of how she did it and all her little secrets and tricks — and each family remembered it slightly different, they were all ‘experts’! [laughing]”

Billy and Mary’s son, Harrison, head chef of the award-winning Cork restaurant, Elbow Lane, weighed in with suggestions for compound butters which Mary in turn developed.

Upon launching, the Irish Gourmet Butter range was taken on by a number of select shops around the country. Then they entered discussions with one of Ireland’s finest sourdough bakers, Sarah Richards of Seagull Bakery in Tramore, wondering if she might sell their butter — a perfect partner to Richards’ wonderful breads.

Richards, unfortunately, didn’t have the fridge space to stock the butter but she was keen to use it in her Viennoiserie and Patisserie (pain au chocolats, croissants etc). Butter used in these rich pastries is usually drier, employs less salt, and is sold in flattened sheets rather than blocks, for ease of use in the lamination process of folding the dough as it proves. The Sharpes got to work and came back to her with what is currently the only Irish pastry butter available.

“She absolutely loved it and she asked if she could spread the word because there is a great network amongst the artisan bakers [Real Bread Ireland] and within 24 hours I had contacts from four other bakeries along with Sarah — Scéal in Dublin; Firehouse in Wicklow; The Merrion Hotel; and Baccús in Dingle — you’re talking serious quantities, and we didn’t look back. We’ll be looking at offering it to the domestic market next.”