Jess Murphy of Kai Restaurant: Never let your ego get in the way of a good opportunity

'People go on about the weather but you don't move to Ireland for the sun'

Fri, 24 Dec, 2021 - 06:30

Nicole Glennon

I’m from a farming background. I’m originally from New Zealand and my husband Dave is from Carlow. We ended up in Galway because I saw an advert on TV when they were trying to populate the West. I was like, ‘Where’s that!’ he said ‘Oh, Galway — we used to holiday there as kids’ and I said ‘I want to live there’. So we moved. It’s been 17 years now.

I love the people here, I love everything about it. People go on about the weather but you don’t move to Ireland for the sun. It’s about the craic, the people, the landscape. And the best food culture is in Galway, obviously. Everyone talks about Denmark being this Holy Mecca of food, and I’m like ‘are you kidding me? We have all that here!’