This much I know: Patrick Guilbaud

The thing about Michelin stars is that it is difficult to hang onto them.

Getting our first star was a very special moment.

When I heard, the first thing I did was to find my chef and give him a big kiss.

I don’t think you should comment on or complain about food unless you know what you are talking about.

If I don’t understand something, I don’t tend to complain about it.

The most bizarre complaint I ever got in the restaurant was about the colour of the walls.

When I was a child growing up in France, my grandmother and my mother instilled a great love of food in me.

They taught me how to smell as well as taste — mint, strawberries, lemon balm, coriander — everything. I tried to pass that love on to my own children. I believe that knowing about food is part of our education, we need to know how to eat well.

If I hadn’t become a chef and then a restaurateur, I think I would have liked to have been a surgeon.

I moved to England in 1974, which is where I met my wife Sally. Soon after that, we opened a very successful restaurant in Cheshire. Then, I wanted to try a capital city — maybe New York or London or Paris. By chance, Irish businessman Barton Kilcoyne, who was one of our customers, suggested Dublin and we visited, fell in love with the place and stayed.

I opened my first restaurant in Dublin in 1981 in a recession. I was young and naive. When you are young, you just follow your heart. I was not scared to come to Dublin but if I’d known that things were about to take off in England I might have stayed there.

If there is one thing life has taught me so far it is to be humble.

The best piece of business advice I was ever given was ‘Patrick, what goes into one pocket must not come out of the other.’

This current recession is a worry for everyone but I am confident in the world and in Ireland. We will recover. We did it before and we will do it again.

I used to be at the market at 5am and then go straight to the restaurant all day — I might take a break for dinner with my family — then back to the restaurant until the end of service. But I have become much better at taking time out. I have such a great team to support me that I don’t have to be there all day every day now.

I still enjoy cooking and love trying new dishes at home. I also love to play golf. I only started when I was forty but got bitten by the bug.

I’d advise aspiring chefs or restaurateurs to work, work, work. Learn as much as you can about the business and remember — it is a business.

I’m not sure exactly what the key to Restaurant Patrick Guibaud’s success is. Our reputation is high but we will always try to be as good as we can. It’s flattering that we are so popular with celebrities and high profile people but we never talk about our clientele. We are like the three wise monkeys — see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Ireland certainly feels like home to me now which is only natural as I have lived longer here than anywhere else.

For years our customers have been asking where they could find our recipes and something about our history and I had to say ‘no, there is nothing’. That gave me the idea for the book Restaurant Patrick Guibaud. The First Thirty Years.

I’m usually quite media shy and I don’t do much radio or TV, but I was very taken by the idea for this book. We approached the hospice, asking if they would like to benefit from the proceeds, as we are firm supporters of the work they do.

Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud. The First Thirty Years combines history, recipes and stories.

The Irish Hospice Foundation will benefit from the sale of the book at €50 from Brown Thomas, &House of Fraser and Avoca.