Restaurant Chestnut owners reveal why they are closing the Michelin-starred West Cork restaurant

Rob Krawczyk and Elaine Fleming reflect on Chestnut’s extraordinary rise, Michelin success, Covid challenges and decision to close

Rob Krawczyk and Elaine Fleming, owners of Restaurant Chestnut

One dark, cold, and foggy evening in March 2018, I set out to join friends for dinner at the ‘soft’ opening of a new restaurant in Ballydehob. Several hours later, I walked back out into the night, consumed with thoughts of the extraordinary meal just eaten and swearing to myself that this restaurant would have a Michelin star within two to three years.

I was wrong. It took just six months.

It was a rise so rapid that it caught the Irish food world completely off guard. It even stunned the owners, chef Rob Krawczyk and his partner Elaine Fleming. Since then, Michelin-starred Restaurant Chestnut has flourished, with Rob’s exquisite cooking, a hyper-local homage to the superb produce of their hinterland, and Elaine’s deceptively serene management of the restaurant only enhancing the tranquility of the space. A national treasure, it is beloved in its West Cork heartland, most of all in Ballydehob. Having weathered covid, Restaurant Chestnut seemed set for a long and prosperous future. And then, Rob and Elaine announced they would be closing Chestnut for good this October.

Rob grew up just west of Chestnut, in Dereenatra, near Schull, and after school, went to the College of Art and Design in Dún Laoghaire.

“I studied special FX for TV and film,” says Rob. “I was always making things when I was young, not just art. After college I ended up in an architect’s office making models.”

Rob and Elaine outside Restaurant Chestnut 

He enjoyed the work but it wasn’t a passion.

When the Celtic Tiger collapsed and work in construction dried up, his parents suggested he turn to food. It was a natural enough move: His parents had always grown their own vegetables and cooked, and for a time ran a small restaurant, The Barn, from their home. His father, Frank Krawczyk, asked renowned London-based Irish chef Richard Corrigan if there might be anything for Rob in his famous Bentley’s seafood restaurant.

“I just loved it,” says Rob. “There were a couple of Irish guys and we got on well and worked hard and I really enjoyed it. It all pushed on from there: it gets easier to get into another good restaurant if you’ve already worked in one, and Bentley’s got me started.”

Subsequent roles included a stage at the legendary Chez Panisse, in California, and he was part of the original team that earned a Michelin star for House Restaurant in the Cliff House in Ardmore: “It was hard, we pushed every day — and you learn.”

The Chop House, in Lismore, was Rob’s first head chef role.

“I really enjoyed that, it was much more rustic in its menus, and we earned a Michelin Bib,” he says.

“I really got into charcuterie. [Owner] Justin [Green] had bought a smoker which was still sitting in its box, so I asked my dad to teach me salami making, tapping into my heritage and going beyond what I’d done up to then in the kitchen. We used to get in whole pigs to break them down and that was a really good learning experience.”

Though it received rave reviews and prospered for several years, the rural location eventually put paid to The Chop House. Driving North for a potential job, an industry contact suggested he check out an executive chef role in Tankardstown House, in Co Meath.

“I took a detour,” says Rob. “It was a Monday, really wet and miserable, but I got a good feeling talking to the owner and accepted. And that’s where I met Elaine.”

Elaine Fleming grew up in Co Meath, studying design in Dublin before going on to Galway to do a master’s in textiles. She worked in art and visual merchandising but, needing a full-time role, applied to Tankardstown House, near her family home, and wound up as a wedding co-ordinator for over five years.

“On our first date, Rob shared his dream of having a restaurant and I’d always wanted to create a brand, to create an identity and it really was just like a perfect match. I see myself and Rob first and foremost as creatives,” she says.

After three years working together, Rob left to gain some experience in Italy. He had also begun to reconnect with his West Cork roots. In a village that just a few years prior had served as the poster child for rural decline, they found a long-shuttered old pub: The Chestnut Tree.

“We just got a real nice feeling from the building,” says Rob. “When you step into the place, it’s like stepping into a home. It had a lot of character. It’s a 200-year-old pub, a beautiful bar in the front, little nooky rooms, we were charmed by it. We made business plans based on that.”

With a shoestring budget, they did most of the work themselves, paring it back to raw elements, making a virtue of necessity. Low wood-panelled ceilings were painted off-white, and bare walls a deep moss-green. When softly lit by night, it seems to have the vibrancy of a living organism and, seating just 18, the gentle tranquility of a culinary zen temple.

“We wanted to do something that was really like inviting people into our home,” says Elaine, “that was very important. We didn’t want to have a big restaurant at all. We were probably not putting on our business hat in that respect but we just wanted a lovely place where people could come and eat really good food and feel comfortable.”

”Food-wise,” says Rob, “I always wanted to do things the right way. I was inspired mainly by West Cork, it has always had the most amazing produce. I just wanted to highlight that and use the growers, producers, farmers, fishermen and even potters.” Over time, his sublime cooking has evolved.

“I’ve simplified things. I think that’s just natural progression. It’s about the primary ingredients, the growers have done all the amazing work and we’re just applying heat and arranging it on a plate. But, if it doesn’t taste nice in the beginning, it doesn’t matter what you do. You have to work very hard to make a horrible generic carrot taste nice, it’s not really possible. So we use the best produce we possibly can.”

A Michelin star changes everything for a restaurant.

“It was a complete shock,” says Rob, “I can’t say we wouldn’t have been looking for one at some point, but not five months after we opened. The Michelin inspector came in three weeks after we opened, and while you can’t not think about the possibility of a star in the back of your head, that’s really where it stayed until we got the email.”

Elaine continues: “It was the Friday before the Michelin Awards ceremony in London the following Monday. I was upstairs in the office. We knew other Irish chefs with stars had already received their invites a month before. Then I saw the email and called Rob upstairs without letting on to anyone else. [Looking fondly at her partner] When you saw it, you just couldn’t get over it. Yeah, you were very emotional, it was really lovely.”

Chef Rob Krawczyk who was awarded a Michelin star for 2021 at his Chestnut Restaurant on Staball Hill, Ballydehob, west Cork. He has two previous awards for 2019 and 2020. Picture: Dan Linehan

They booked flights and a hotel, and after finishing Sunday lunch service, Frank drove them to the airport. The following day, they headed to the ceremony.

“We bumped into the guys from Mews Baltimore [where Ahmet Dede first earned a star] and Takashi Miyazaki,” says Elaine, “and none of us had told anyone — and, still, we had no idea exactly what it meant. When we went in, all the other Irish Michelin-starred chefs were congratulating us but we were still in the dark. Gordon Ramsay was presenting and they started announcing the first new stars and Ballydehob came up on the big screen — they always do location first and then the name of the restaurant.

“I still have the photo. We were like, oh my goodness, this is actually happening and Rob went up on stage and it was lovely.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit of a blur,” says Rob. “It only begins to slowly sink in afterwards. And then it went mental. We had journalists onto us, my phone was erupting with messages. One of the Irish contingent had booked dinner for six and 22 wild Irish people turned up.”

Elaine says: “It was so fun, but by the end we were exhausted and the next morning Rob had an 8am radio interview with Ian Dempsey, we’d just got to bed a couple of hours before that. When we finally got back to Cork, bookings just went crazy, people were banging on windows and shouting through doors trying to get reservations.

“For a brand new business, getting on our feet, it put us on the culinary map and made us a destination dining spot. [The stars] showcased West Cork and made people travel down to us and we were already conscious of the distance from Cork, Dublin, and so on. That was the most wonderful part, getting to share everything we had created with people and to see their response. And to see our families so proud meant the most of all, the world to us.”

The following year saw the little country restaurant morph into one of the hottest tickets in the country. When the season eventually ended, they did overdue work on the building, then took off on holiday to recharge before reopening again in March on St Patrick’s Day weekend. Then covid came calling.

“We were still finding our feet because we literally got the star so quick,” says Elaine. “And that’s a whole different level. We were hosting cookery classes just before opening. During the classes, there was talk of covid and we realised it was serious.

“Trying to navigate two years of covid was exceptionally challenging. Our aim was always to keep our team employed and everyone safe. It was tough, but we did it, trying to get through with grace and positivity, to lead by example but not knowing how long it was going to last.

“We were always very determined from day one to create something, and anything is possible as long as you work hard. And because we had achieved what we had so early on and saw the wonderful, positive impact it had, we weren’t going to let that go.”

It is very apparent how solid the couple’s bond is, both personally and professionally.

“Opening up this place together,” says Rob, “we learned fairly quickly what our strengths and weaknesses are. But we also learned quite quickly how constantly supportive we are of each other and we make all decisions together, business and personal. It’s lovely to be able to work together, but we have very strict rules that we don’t take work home.”

So why call time now?

“It’s always best to leave the party when it’s in full swing, as they say,” says Elaine.

“I think we’ve done something incredible,” says Rob, “opening a small restaurant in a small rural village. There’s immense pride here in what we’ve created. Ballydehob is an incredible little town but I suppose we took a risk and it paid off. But in a Michelin star restaurant there is a level of intensity that you have to maintain. You work very long hours. Even though the restaurant may just be open four or five days a week, you’re working six or seven and there’s a whole team working for many hours beforehand to create that little three-hour dining experience.

“There are other things we want to try and this seemed like the right time to end this chapter. It’s a positive thing, not negative.”

Which begs the million-dollar question — what is that next project?

“We have decided not to tell anyone because we want to devote all that time to celebrating the team and what we have created to date,” says Rob.

“We want the energy to be focused on Chestnut until the final day and not to be full of talk about what happens next.”

“All will be revealed about our next move before we close the door,” Elaine promises. “It’s been a great journey but it’s not quite over yet.”